


this beautiful thing won't change

by andibeth82



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie) Compliant, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, First Meetings, Friends to Lovers, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-08
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-08 07:28:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 44,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4295967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night, a SHIELD agent stumbles into the life of a nice Midwestern girl. </p><p>This is the story of their beginning.</p><p>[A Clint and Laura Barton origin story.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I could never have predicted this much of a story to come out of a relationship that I was so taken with, but here we are.
> 
> (Slight meshing of comic and MCU as Bobbi appears in this universe. Because everyone should appreciate Bobbi as Clint's ex.)
> 
> Title (and all subsequent chapter verses) from Vienna Teng.

**PART ONE**

_We've come so far in this desert_  
_How we blossom and we cease_  
_Tell your story now_  
_We have so much to know_

* * *

  **MANCHESTER, ENGLAND**

 

Clint gets four blocks before he realizes that he’s pretty much screwed.

He’d blame the job, but he feels that would be unfair, because he had all the intel and all the right information. He hadn’t let his guard down too late or too early, he’d been at the rendezvous point at the exact time that he was supposed to be after fending off a handful of guards at the compound they’d taken over, and he had even double checked to make sure he wasn’t walking into a trap of any sort by actually _following_ orders. Which was big in of itself, since following orders was something Clint Barton never really liked to do.

He hadn’t planned on being _ambushed_.

He’d blame the fact that the guys who attacked him were bad shots but no, Clint realizes as he limps down the street, they were actually very good shots; stupidly good shots, in fact, because he can feel the amount of blood he’s losing with every step. He had fought most of his attackers off but not before one of them managed to get a bullet to his thigh, near the top of his leg -- fantastically at the point where he had almost finished recovering from a previous wound, bursting the scar of that one wide open.

It was only right, then, that with no place to _actually_ run to given that he was out of options, he would choose to throw himself through one of the warehouse windows, glass and all, landing hard on the concrete floor where he’s pretty sure he’d dislocated the shoulder that had broken his fall. He’d punched it back in pretty easily before fleeing the scene but in any case, Clint had felt the last of his adrenaline drain as soon as he started moving.

By his own count, he’d made it through Heaton Park, which was a feat in of itself considering that he had been trying to keep his broken body under the radar. But at this point, halfway down the ironically titled Bury Hill Road, he’d stopped bothering to wonder what direction he was wandering in.

He should be at a hospital, that much he knows. Instead, he’s trying desperately to find a bar or some other paltry-filled establishment that serves alcohol, somewhere that he can rest while waiting for extraction. Fortunately, Manchester is full of pubs and restaurants and despite the fact he’s pretty much wandering blind, there are enough options to tide him over.

A hanging wooden sign a few meters ahead catches his eye and he squints for awhile to gauge its validity before moving closer. _The Ostrich_ is probably the not the best choice, considering it looks like it requires making himself presentable with more energy than he actually has, but at least the brick exterior allows him a place to rest. His uninjured shoulder is aching from the weight of a small backpack that holds various items as well as his collapsible bow; he’d lost his quiver and the rest of his arrows somewhere during the attack and he’s more pissed about that than the fact that his shoulder is pulsing in a way that tells him he really, really should not be anywhere that doesn’t have the letters “E" or "R” in it. But fuck that.

It’s been a _day_ , and he wants a goddamn drink.

“Oh my god.”

Clint opens his eyes, blinking into view a woman slightly shorter than him, with long strands of brown hair. Her eyes, which have been moving back and forth over his body, widen the more she continues to stare and Clint decides that as much as he wants to think otherwise, this is probably a really bad time to use one of his pick-up lines.

“What happened to you?”

Clint winces as another stab of pain shoots through his shoulder. “Would you believe me if I said I fell out of a window?”

There’s a crease in the woman’s brow, before her lips thin into a straight line. “Actually, I don’t know why...but yes.”

Clint can’t help it; he laughs, forgetting where he is and what’s happened, and it turns into a cough as pain shoots through his chest, immobilizing him.

(Well, he hadn’t figured his ribs got in on the action, but it’s nice that they didn’t want to feel left out. Fury was absolutely going to keep him out of the field for months.)

There’s a firm hand on his good arm, fingers wrapping around his torn jacket, and when he lifts his head again the woman’s face is closer, her pupils rooted in concern.

“You should really be at a hospital.”

Clint groans, biting down on another laugh, because he knows he can’t tell her the truth about not being able to do that. “Hospitals don’t have bars.”

“No, they don’t,” says the woman in a voice that sounds like she’s lived through something like this before and has very little patience for stubborn idiots who get hurt. He feels his mouth curl into a smile as she continues. “They have medicine and they have doctors.”

“Well, then, I’m not sold.” He struggles to stand up straight because really, his leg is picking an extraordinarily terrible time to give out, and the woman manages to hoist him up using one side of her body.

“You’re coming with me.”

“Already?” He manages another smile. “We barely know each other.”

If the woman finds him amusing (and Clint’s pretty sure she doesn’t, judging by her reactions), she’s a hard sell. “No, we don’t. But I’d rather not see you die out here on the street.”

“Pity,” he says, but he leans into her anyway because hell, his condition isn't going to improve and he might as well take her up on her offer. The woman’s hands are tight around his body and he attempts to at least try not to let all his weight hang off her.

“Does my guardian angel have a name?”

The woman shoots him a look as she steers him towards what Clint assumes must be her car. “Laura,” she says finally, and he notices she’s smart enough to hesitate, to think about whether or not she wants to actually tell the truth. “Does the man who’s going to bleed out on my floor have a name?”

He almost laughs again, and catches himself just in time. “Clint,” he offers as she helps him fold his body into the passenger seat. He only feels mildly bad about the fact he’s definitely leaving blood stains on the door handle, before he lets his focus shift to the fact that Laura’s removed the pack from his shoulder and has tossed it into the back seat. He desperately hopes she won’t bother to open it and ask questions about what’s inside, but fortunately, she seems too preoccupied to care.

“Clint. That’s unusual,” Laura remarks dryly and he snorts.

“Clinton Francis, if we’re being polite. Wasn’t sure how formal I had to be, what with the whole almost-dying thing.”

Laura doesn’t answer as she rummages around behind him, shoving a plush towel in his direction. “Hold that to your leg, okay?”

He decides not to wonder about why she’s seemingly so well prepared to take care of injured people on a whim and accepts the towel as she slams the door, before getting in the driver’s seat. Clint watches as white-knuckled fingers wrap themselves around the steering wheel.

“Are you always this uptight?”

“Are you always this stubborn?”

“Only sometimes.” The car jerks backwards and Clint arches his head against the seat, suddenly feeling that maybe he should’ve gotten off his ass and gone to get help earlier. “Where am I, anyway?”

Laura shoots him a look. “You don’t even know where you _are_?”

“I know I’m in London,” he responds. “Manchester, even.”

Laura sighs, and Clint wonders if it’s even possible for her fingers to hold the wheel any tighter. “You’re in Pendlebury,” she says finally. “Right _outside_ of Manchester, actually. I picked you up around A580. Does that even mean anything to you?”

“Sure,” Clint says brashly. “That’s the highway.” He stares out the window, watching the street signs flash by. “You live far?”

“Far enough. And close enough,” she says evasively before pausing, as if there’s something else she wants to say but she’s not sure how to say it. “I normally don’t pick up men like this.”

“Hey, I normally don’t pick up women like this,” and when Laura shoots him a sideways glance that he feels could destroy a village, it causes him to cringe. “Like this,” he clarifies, gesturing loosely to his injury. Laura turns her gaze back to the road.

“Keep putting pressure on that,” is all she says in return, pulling onto what looks like a quieter stretch of pavement, and he manages to catch the street sign that proclaims _St. Peters Road_. Clint closes his eyes and when he opens them, a quaint looking establishment -- what looks like it’s part of a connecting house -- is jutting out from the growing darkness that’s being pulled over the fading afternoon sky. It’s too small to be an actual house but it definitely looks bigger than an apartment, and he stares out the window as Laura turns the key sharply and then gets out, grabbing the backpack before pulling open the door to the passenger seat.

“Come on, you,” she says as she reaches in to wrap one arm around his good shoulder. Laura helps him slowly onto the driveway, letting him lean against the car while she locks up and then maneuvers him back into her hold.

“Sorry,” Clint says again as they start to move, tightening his grip on the towel he’s holding. He feels Laura’s chest rise and fall slowly, as if he’s starting to frustrate her.

“You said that.”

“No, I mean it. Sorry. For the blood and the mess and...stuff,” he finishes lamely, hoping maybe he can attribute his sudden lack of clarity to the fact his leg is practically _screaming_. Laura’s hand squeezes his waist a little harder as she sticks a key into a door protected by a failing, rusty screen and Clint can’t tell if the action is out of instinct for his wounds, or because of what he’d said. In any case, he forgets about it as soon as she pushes the door open, throwing his bag to the ground, and he tries not to pay attention as he feels the weight of it hit the floor.

“You can keep your shirt on if you’re comfortable, but I need to get you out of your pants,” she says tonelessly as she helps him into the small bathroom. “I need to look at your leg.”

“Good luck,” he mutters, settling himself on the toilet seat as she produces a pair of scissors, methodically cutting through the fabric of his cargo pants as if it’s nothing. He has only a moment’s regret for the fact that he’ll have to buy completely new clothes, and probably not on Fury’s dime, before he finds himself thankful that at least he decided to do this job without his normal uniform. It was one of the only perks about having an assignment in a place where he was bound to be more visible, and losing two specialty arrows and his quiver didn’t count.

“In the tub,” she says matter-of-factly once she’s removed his ruined pants and Clint lifts an eyebrow.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Laura replies shortly. “And no, you’re not taking a bath.” She helps him raise his bad leg over the ceramic ledge, and he wonders if she can see the pain reflected in what he knows is the sweat that’s beginning to break out on his face.

“Pity,” he mutters as she washes her hands, noticing how she seems to be scrubbing her fingers more intensely than usual as blood runs off of them. The irony of the whole thing was that he could _use_ a bath at this rate, not that he was going to make this situation any weirder than it already was by suggesting that. “So how are you going to patch me up?”

“With this,” Laura responds, ducking under the sink and producing a large black bag. She sits down on the floor and begins unpacking it, taking out large pads of gauze before getting into the tub with him, bending over to replace now-soaked through towel.

“I owe you,” Clint says as she starts cleaning what he knows is the part of his wound that’s been re-opened. Laura hums.

“For the mess, or for distracting me from my evening?”

“Both,” Clint replies, fighting the urge to flinch as a wave of pain reverberates through his nerve endings. He tries not to think about how close she is to him, almost intimately so. “You didn’t have to take me in.”

“I didn’t,” Laura says almost absently as she concentrates on his injury. “But I did.” She lets the words hang in the air, prodding gently at his skin and he bites down on a yell of pain.

“This is an old injury.”

“Yep,” Clint says tiredly, watching as the lines on Laura’s face multiply. “I make things easy for people.”

Laura shakes her head. “You may make things easy, but I need to re-stitch this, otherwise you’re going to bleed out for real.” She gets up, stepping out of the tub and sticking her hands under the faucet again. “I have some whiskey if you want to numb the pain.”

“Got anything stronger?”

Laura gives him a look but disappears, and Clint can vaguely hear the sounds of glasses clinking somewhere to the left of him, in the space that he assumes must be the kitchen. She returns with a half-filled cup of what Clint recognizes as vodka, which she shoves it into his hand.

“Don’t die,” she says curtly as she gets in the tub again, ripping open a sterilized needle from a wrapper she’s taken from her bag. Clint grunts as the liquid burns its way down his throat, before placing the glass on the rim of the tub.

“Had worse.”

“I’m sure you have,” Laura says but her tone isn’t sarcastic as much as it’s concerning. “If you can walk on a bullet wound, dislocated shoulder and at least one bruised rib without falling over, this can’t be your first rodeo.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, carefully avoiding saying anything else as she threads a needle, and he looks away as it hits his flesh. “What are you, by the way? A doctor?”

“Yes,” Laura says, glancing up. “Kind of. I’m doing part of my residency at a hospital here.”

“Fantastic,” Clint mutters, because _of fucking course_ it would figure that out of all the places and all the people, he stumbles bleeding and broken into the house of someone who’s far too good for him. Laura pulls a little harder at his skin.

“Is that a problem? Because you seem very happy about the possibility of letting yourself die, which I’m happy to help with.”

“Aren’t you a winner,” Clint grunts, and Laura smiles grimly.

“Winner or not, I’m not the one who looks like they just ran headfirst into a firefight.”

“Fair.” Clint closes his eyes. “Look, I’m not even from this area. I’m here on business.”

“What kind of business leaves someone in this state?” Laura asks curiously with an edge to her voice, and Clint wonders if she’s keeping him talking for a reason beyond taking his mind off the work she’s doing.

“Wrong turns,” Clint says and Laura moves her jaw slowly, bowing her head further.

“I’m not going to ask you what you were doing,” she says finally. “It’s pretty clear that _whatever_ it was is something that I don’t want any part of. But I’m curious as to why the hell you wouldn’t go to a hospital. I think any sane person would have wanted to get themselves help for this as soon as possible.”

“So?” Clint asks brashly. Laura sighs again.

“So, call me crazy, but you seem like you’re tougher than that. And in my experience, that’s not normal.”

Clint leans his head against the tile of the bathroom wall, breathing through the pain of the stitching. “Why were you at the bar tonight?” he asks, trying a different tactic to avoid answering her question. He feels a reprieve in the pull of the needle and shifts his eyes sideways to find that Laura’s paused uncharacteristically, half a stitch in progress.

“My boyfriend left me,” she says after a long silence. “So I guess I just wanted to not be alone for one night.” Her fingers start moving again, pulling a little more strongly at the needle and causing Clint to make a small noise.

“I’m sorry,” he says when he finds his voice again because he is, because he does mean it this time, because this close to her, he can see how she’s struggling to hold herself together. Laura shrugs.

“It’s fine,” she says in a tone that Clint can tell means it's not fine, but he also knows with knowing her less than two hours, it would be more than a little rude (not to mention suspicious) to keep pressing about her personal life.

“Guys suck,” is the response he decides on, and Laura’s mouth lifts in a half smile that Clint can tell is more perfunctory than anything else. He watches as she finishes the last stitch, leaning back on her hands.

“I can’t do anything about your shoulder or your ribs,” she says finally as she stands up, helping him to do the same. “I’m sorry. I can give you some pain killers I have from work...it’s unorthodox, but at least it’ll help.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Clint says as he leans against the wall. “Give me five minutes to rest and I’ll be on my way.”

“Are you serious?” Laura blinks, her eyes narrowing. “You’re not going anywhere,” she continues. “Not like that.”

“Trust me,” Clint says, trying not to sound offended by her concern, mentally reminding himself that he’s someone who looks like he’s in really bad shape thanks to a bar fight, and not someone who spends their whole life running around on the brink of death. “Someone will pick me up.”

“Even if someone can pick you up, you shouldn’t be moving right now,” she points out. “Those stitches need to set and you need rest, and you need medication. But preferably, at least rest.”

She’s right, and Clint doesn’t want to argue, but the thought of staying anywhere overnight -- particularly with her -- makes him feel slightly uncomfortable. It’s not a danger thing; he’s gotten rid of the thugs and people coming after him, but staying with Laura means getting involved, and it means making it personal. He mentally runs over the other options in his mind.

He’s got a phone in his bag, and one of the other agents he’s working with is supposed to be waiting on any emergency call. The nearest safe house, he knows, is at least a twenty minute drive in a neighboring town Clint had remembered mapping from his phone earlier that evening, a much longer walk, and either way, leaving here means fending for himself in the open, toughing it out with no support until god knows when.

“So what are you proposing?” he asks, even though he knows the answer, but hell if he’s going to assume anything. As it is, Laura looks a little unsure when she responds -- Clint can tell from the way her face changes -- but she speaks anyway.

“Stay here with me tonight. Let me make sure you’re okay.”

Clint eyes her, trying to figure out if there’s anything else hidden underneath her words. He’s long past the point of being suspicious but still surprised that his current state has made her more willing to let down her guard.

“You didn’t even tell me your last name,” he says and she crosses her arms, leveling her gaze.

“You didn’t, either.”

Clint opens his mouth and then closes it, and he realizes he sort of wants to give her points for the fact that she had been able to figure out that giving his middle name earlier wasn’t entirely legitimate. “Fair point,” he says, taking a breath that burns. “Barton.”

Laura nods slowly. “Hanson,” she trades, and Clint smiles.

“Laura Hanson.”

“Clinton Francis Barton.” Silence stretches between them, taking up an awkward residence, until Laura breaks it.

“Come on. I’ll give you something else to change into so you don’t have to sleep in those clothes,” she says, gesturing to his shirt which is now soaked with sweat in addition to dirt and blood. One hand wraps around his waist and for the first time since she reached out to him back on the street, he notices how warm and soft it feels on his broken body.

“You’re very invested in making sure I don’t die,” Clint grumbles as he tries to push the thought out of his mind, but he lets her help him out of the bathroom and towards the bedroom.

 

***

 

Laura is nothing but professional, and it doesn’t take long for Clint to figure out why she’s probably one of the best doctors her program has ever seen. Decent stitching job aside, she’s confident in the way she takes off his clothes and moves him around the room, the same kind of confidence that Clint knows would be comparable to any agent that had medical training, or anyone that came out of the army, for that matter.

He’s tired at this point -- exhausted would be more like it, given the activities of the day and the blood loss and the effort to keep himself conscious for most of the past few hours -- and so it takes him longer than it probably should to realize at some point, Laura’s stopped undressing him and is instead staring at what he knows are the variety of scars littering his chest and his arms.

“You can ask if you want,” Clint says when he notices, even though he knows he won’t give her the real answer. He’s got a ton of adequate responses stored up, though, a combination of doing his job for as long as he’s been doing it, as well as a (probably) terrible habit of picking up people in random cities who would start to ask questions when they got his clothes off. Laura shakes her head mutely, absently putting her hand on a jagged line across his stomach, and Clint fights the urge to respond visibly. Her palm is like a blanket on his calloused skin, a soft comfort against the chaos that is the history that ravages his own body.

“You look like the people we bring in from the war,” is all she says before she gets up from where she’s been sitting beside him on the bed, and Clint grabs her hand.

“Hey,” he says, entwining their fingers, as if he suddenly needs to grab onto whatever anchor she can provide while he’s got her here, “hey, okay...I’m sorry if this freaked you out.” He finds her eyes, locks onto them to keep her in focus. “Whatever happened to me back there...if you’re worried about it, no one’s going to come and get me. I promise.”

The way Laura doesn’t take her gaze off of him right away makes him realize she _is_ worried about it, that maybe she wasn’t worried until she looked at his body and put together the pieces that she wasn’t just taking care of someone who got into a scuffle every now and again. Clint’s never had a partner, he’s never had anyone take care of him before, but he knows how he looks to people who have the pleasure of seeing him out of his clothes -- damaged goods, more or less, a map of his past decorating his body, the things he never had control over and the things that he willingly inflicted upon himself. Being part of SHIELD, however long, had only added to that chart.

“Well,” Laura swallows down what looks like a little bit of apprehension, “if someone _did_ come, I’m sure the guy with a bullet wound can take care of himself with no problem, right?”

Clint leans his head back against the bed post and smiles. “Hell yeah, he can.” A small cough rips through his body, spreading fire through his lungs and he finds himself gasping as the pain hits at his rib, rendering him breathless.

“Hey.” Laura moves back to the bed, and suddenly she’s so close she might as well be pressed up next to him. “Take it easy, okay?”

Clint nods, struggling to get his breath back, attempting to ignore what he recognizes is Laura’s growing concern.

“Are you going to be able to rest?”

Clint nods again. “Gimme some pills so I can pass out for a few hours, I’ll be fine,” he mutters, waving one hand around. Laura doesn’t seem convinced, not moving from her spot next to him.

“I’m serious,” Clint says after another moment, when he feels like he can talk without sounding entirely pathetic, and when he realizes she still hasn’t shifted. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I do worry about you,” Laura says without hesitation and Clint arches a brow. “How can I not? You’re hurt.”

“I’ve been hurt before,” he responds. “A lot worse, in case you can’t tell. Cheated death every time, and I can’t think of why this time would be different.” It doesn’t make sense to him, most of her worry -- she’s a doctor and while his injuries are serious, if she was truly nervous about him not surviving the night on her own watch, Clint knows she would have been more insistent about getting him to a hospital.

“Clearly, you have,” Laura says as she hands him a pill bottle, and he can tell she’s trying to match his bravado. “But usually when people die on me, it’s because I’ve cut them open by accident. Not because I’ve found them bleeding outside a fancy bar.”

Clint allows himself to grin. “I won’t be that guy,” he promises as he swallows the capsules dry. He hands the bottle back and Laura puts it on the bedside table.

“You better not be,” she says, getting up and moving the blankets over him. He watches her walk away before he finally lets himself drift off to the creaking sound of a sofa bed being pulled out, but he’s up before six from both the pain and the medication that’s started to wear off.

She’s done a good enough job of tending to him, Clint finds himself thinking as he regains consciousness, sitting up slowly in bed. His body’s not going to mend itself on its own, but her stitches are holding and he’s certainly in more concrete shape than he was several hours ago. He tries to keep his movements quiet as he gets out of bed, though all his grand plans to sneak out are dashed when he walks into the kitchen and sees her drinking coffee, realizing too late that if she’s a doctor, she must never really sleep. Laura looks up in surprise when he enters and he assesses his stability based on the drugs he knows are still coursing through his system. If he can get to his phone and call for emergency, he could possibly get out of this in time to get himself real help, and not bother her further.

“How many times did you check on me last night?” Clint asks and Laura startles before her body relaxes.

“Every hour,” she admits. “Fortunately, you were out cold when I changed your bandages again.”

Clint’s hands go to his leg, and he realizes for the first time that the gauze-like dressing covering his wound is less sweaty and less soaked than it was when he went to bed.

“Appreciate it,” he says, feeling like the words should encompass more than just gratitude for her medical work. Laura nods.

“I’d ask if you want coffee, but...” She trails off, and when she pushes the hair out of her eyes, Clint can clearly see the bags residing there. He smiles, feeling a little sad. She didn’t get a night off, but she didn’t get to drown her sorrows the way she wanted to, either.

“I get it. No coffee for the injured guy.” He clears his throat. “Uh, anyway, once I get my bag and stuff, I’ll be out of your hair.”

Laura stares at him, putting down her mug and Clint can practically see the rebuttal sitting on her lips. He really, _really_ hopes she won’t try to keep him here, mostly because he’s worried that if she does, he might actually _want_ to start getting comfortable, and he knows that’s not an option. He needs to get home, he needs to finish cataloging this mission, and he needs to return to his own life -- a life that absolutely does not include a good-looking young doctor who lives in the middle of Europe.

“Well, you can’t go like that,” Laura says finally, and Clint opens his mouth to protest his ability to move when he notices that he’s not wearing pants. Laura’s mouth twitches upwards.

“You’ve got a point.”

She walks into the bedroom and pulls a pair of hospital scrubs from the bottom drawer of her dresser, motioning silently towards the bed, where he sits back down. With careful ease and practiced fingers that Clint remembers from the night before, she helps him into the loose-fitting pants, tying the drawstring around his middle.

“There’s a bus stop at the end of the block,” she says after they’ve returned to the living room. “If you need to go somewhere for someone to pick you up.”

Clint files that information away in the back of his brain, because no sense in trying to explain that won’t be necessary. Their fingers brush slightly as she passes him his bag, helping him adjust it on his good shoulder.

“Thanks,” he says hoarsely. “For everything.”

Laura steps back, hugging her arms to her chest, as if she’s trying to stop herself from wanting to touch him again.

“Good luck,” she says quietly, pushing open the decrepit door and Clint gives a small wave as he leaves, resisting the urge to turn around until he hears the door close sharply behind him. The blinds of the small window are closed, but Clint half-wonders if she’s still watching him from somewhere else, making sure he’s okay.

When he’s far enough down the block, he glances up at the street sign, fishing a pen and crumpled napkin out of his bag. He scribbles down the house number, address, and her name before grabbing for the phone, and as he stuffs the paper into his pocket, it occurs to him that he’s not really sure what he plans on doing with the information.

But, well. What the hell. It can’t hurt.

 

* * *

 

 

Clint doesn’t get back to Manchester for nearly six months.

It’s a combination of his recovery and other missions and paperwork, and being put on other people’s assignments, and then for a variety of reasons he ends up being forced to take four days worth of vacation that he would normally otherwise protest against. But Clint gladly accepts the time off, thankful for the break in what has become a stressful month of yelling with Fury along with some organizational changes in the SHIELD ranks.

“You can go anywhere you want, so long as you clear it with the logistics department,” Fury says as he hands him a signed form, and Clint beelines to the third floor of headquarters, filling out the rest of the paperwork without really thinking about. A week later, he’s walking off a plane at Manchester Airport, sunglasses sliding down his face and duffel bag in tow.

He deposits his things at the Old Trafford Hotel, not the most classic of accommodations but since he’s not exactly working, he doesn’t mind staying somewhere a little less fancy. After changing out of his travel clothes he heads outside for a walk, wandering up and down various side streets until he finds himself standing outside an establishment called Caffe Nero. Ironically, it’s a coffee shop seems more Italian based, but Clint finds himself not caring as he settles in, ordering himself a latte while patting himself on the back for not just hightailing it to McDonalds out of habit.

He sits back and removes the crumpled napkin from his bag, smoothing it out while staring at the number written on it. There were, he knows, two ways this could go. She could refuse to pick up the phone, not recognizing his number, and then he would be forced to decide whether or not leaving a message was an option. Or she could answer and get entirely freaked out that a man she hadn’t talked to in six months had found her personal information, through however conventional means. He’s convinced himself that at this point the second option is much more likely than the first, and he orders two more coffees before he works up enough guts to start dialing. The whole situation makes him want to laugh, because he knows any of his co-workers would find it hysterical that he was nervous about talking to a woman, much less making a simple phone call.

“Hey,” he says a little cheerily when a voice answers on the third ring. “It’s Clint Barton.” He waits for a response, and when Laura doesn’t immediately answer, he pushes forward. “The, uh, guy from the not-bar fight a few months ago?”

“ _Oh_ ,” Laura says a little cautiously, as if she has to think in order to remember who she’s talking to -- or, Clint thinks, as if she has to remember if she wants to talk to him at all. “Hi. How are you?”

“Good, I’m good. Actually, uh...funny enough, I’m in your area right now.” He glances outside the window, while crossing and uncrossing his legs underneath the table. “Staying here a few days for business.”

“Business,” Laura repeats, her tone clipped, and though this time it’s not _entirely_ true, Clint knows she still probably doesn’t buy it. “I don’t remember giving you my number,” Laura continues a little warily.

“Right. Well, you didn’t, but you did give me your name last time. And there’s only one Laura Hanson who moonlights at North Manchester General Hospital and lives on St. Peters Road,” he answers smoothly. “ _And_ you made quite an impression last time, so I want to return the favor. If you’re interested.”

“You’re kind of a creep,” Laura says, but there’s a bit of affection hidden in her voice, mingled with careful caution. “Does the favor involve getting hurt again?”

“I promise it doesn’t,” he answers. “I just want to take you to dinner.” As soon as he says the words, he suddenly realizes that he has no idea what life has been like for Laura in the past six months, if outside of his bubble of work and missions, hers has included schooling and possibly a brand new relationship. He keeps talking, figuring that at least throwing out the invitation can’t hurt. “I mean, I can take you to dinner and we can actually talk. Without me bleeding in your car this time.”

There’s a pause, and then Laura clears her throat. “Well, if you can promise me that you won’t give me a reason to work after hours, I suppose I can meet you.”

“No work,” he affirms. “There’s a place I like to go when I come here, if you’re up for it -- a Japanese place, actually. Sapporo Teppenyakki on Liverpool Road. The sake is great and the sushi’s not too bad, either.” He waits as the sound of typing fills his ears, a few mumbled noises over what he assumes is a loudspeaker, and then Laura’s voice filters through the phone again.

“I get done tonight at six. I can meet you after that,” she says before she hangs up. Clint puts down the phone, picks up his coffee, and smiles.

 

***

 

Clint gets about halfway to the restaurant before it dawns on him that he’s not exactly sure what he’s doing, and also that he’s never done anything like this before. Granted, he’s done the whole picking up girls thing, well before he was ever with SHIELD -- that had been the perk of being shipped around to different places as part of his tenure in the army. Clint could do flirting with one hand tied behind his back; he was well-versed in talking to girls, even more well-versed in taking them back to rooms on occasion. But he’d never been genuinely attracted to someone like this, and certainly never enough to warrant wanting to return to somewhere so he could see them for a second time, just because.

 _And that’s the problem_ , Clint thinks as he waits, the ball of nerves inside his stomach growing increasingly larger as the moments tick by. There’s absolutely no reason why he should be pursuing this, as it might end up backfiring on him completely. On the other hand, there were no rules at SHIELD about what he could and couldn’t do with his social life. And it was his vacation. And what the hell, he deserved to have some fun and make his own choices.

Laura arrives five minutes past eight and the first thing Clint notices is that her hair is shorter than it had been a few months ago. It’s pulled up halfway, the rest trailing towards her shoulders, and in the glow of the street lamps he can see the reddish tint of highlights threading through her scalp. The second thing he notices are the flat white shoes on her feet, the ones that match her simple cotton dress. He finds himself filing it all away -- Laura Hanson, the girl who was simple, in more ways than one.

“You can stand,” Laura says when she gets close enough, and Clint stifles a laugh.

“Good to see you too,” he says, reaching forward. Laura leans in for the hug and when she does so, Clint can faintly smell the scent of lavender.

“So this is what someone looks like when they’re not dying,” Laura continues as she pulls away. “You clean up nice.”

“So do you,” Clint offers, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Thanks for letting me take you out.”

Laura smiles and then walks ahead, pulling open the door. “Are you ever going to tell me what kind of business you're in that sends you to England for kicks? Do you work for the mob or something?”

“The mob?” Clint asks he follows her in, and then to a table. “Where did _that_ come from?”

“Just a guess,” Laura says, her tone unflappably casual. “My grandfather was in the mob, actually. He had people all over that worked for him, that did a bunch of scary, secretive stuff.” Her words are playful but there’s a seriousness that he immediately picks up on. She’s not just testing him out, he realizes -- she’s providing him with information about her life to make him aware that she’s more on his level than he initially thought.

“I’m totally not one of those scary mob guys,” Clint promises as he turns over a cup and pours tea. “That I can swear by.”

“Army, then?”

“Used to be,” he admits, figuring he can let her in on at least _that_ part of his life. “Spent about four years overseas.”

“But that’s not what you’re doing now,” Laura says wisely, pouring her own tea, Clint frowns.

“Not really.”

Laura nods slowly, as if she doesn’t need to know anything else, as if she doesn’t expect anything else. Then, “I don’t need to know what you do, Clint. It’s okay.” She shrugs. “I just wanted to know how much you were going to keep hiding from me. I’m not entirely okay with it, but I’ve had a few instances in my life where I’ve had to live on the edge and it’s something I can handle.”

Clint lets out a slow breath. “That’s fair,” he says. “It’s, uh...the nature of the job is a little intense.”

“Really.” Laura arches her right brow. “I had no idea.”

“Whatever,” Clint mutters, surprised at how easily he’s able to fall into a comfortable banter. “Anyway, more importantly, it’s confidential. You don’t want to know what I do, and it’s better if you don’t.”

“You make it sound like you kill people,” Laura says, cocking her head and putting down her cup. “Do you kill people, Clint Barton?”

And Clint’s not really sure how to answer that, because saying no would be a lie, and he can’t actually say yes without putting himself in a situation that he really doesn’t want to provoke. So he goes for what he hopes is the next best answer, taking a chance on what he’s picked up about her personality.

“The same way you do.”

Laura stops with one hand on her napkin and for a moment, Clint thinks he’s totally, completely offended her. But then her face breaks into a grin, a smile splitting her lips apart into two thin, red lines.

“Just so you know, my co-worker is on standby tonight,” she says lightly. “In case anything goes wrong.”

“Do you want something to go wrong?” Clint asks automatically, before mentally cursing his ability to keep his thoughts to himself. But Laura leans over the table, onto her elbows, and shrugs while a grin tugs at the side of her mouth.

“Yeah. Maybe I do.”

 

***

 

He doesn’t mean to go home with her. He _really_ doesn’t mean to go home with her.

For one thing, as much as Clint will pick up women in random bars and in random countries, he respects Laura. Mostly because she saved his life but also because he can’t help remembering the reason behind why they met in the first place -- and Laura doesn’t strike him as the kind of girl who deserves to have her life continually turned upside down by crappy men. But after two rounds of sake, he’s feeling more loose than usual and Laura, for her part, isn’t exactly keeping herself closed off, and so he tries to tell himself it’s okay when she suggests they go back to her place to hang out.

“Do you remember where I live? Or do you need directions?” she asks as they leave the restaurant, lifting the car keys from his hand. He sighs.

“St. Peters Road,” he answers, tapping his forehead with his index finger. “Photographic memory, actually. And who said you could drive?”

“Me,” Laura says simply. “I’m a doctor, remember? I can tell when people are not okay to drive.”

“You’re only half a doctor,” Clint grumbles and Laura smiles as she opens the door.

“And you’re only half an ass, Clint Barton.”

“I know,” he admits. “But I’m an ass who’s coming home with you, right?”

Laura rolls her eyes but gets into the car. “Yes. That.” She slams the door and starts the engine. “You don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow, do you?”

“Nope,” Clint says shaking his head. “Just me and my vacation. Maybe a little sightseeing.”

“No work?” Laura asks as she turns the wheel.

“Like I said,” and he crosses his arms in front of his chest a little sloppily. “No work. This is my own time.”

They drive together in silence until they reach her place, a strange sense of familiarity washing over Clint as Laura turns onto the street and then walks towards the door with him. Traveling as much as he did, there were dozens of places that he had been before, that he knew like the back of his hand -- he knew what shops were open late in what cities, secret shortcuts around towns and the best places to get breakfast, the hidden cab line at Frankfurt Airport that cut down on travel time when it was a busy day. But this invokes a different kind of familiarity, Clint realizes, as he walks inside. It feels like a part of a home he never had and he attempts to shake off the feeling, rolling his head in the process.

Laura looks over at him. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Clint lies, because he doesn’t feel like admitting anything about his thoughts just yet. “Feels strange to be back, I guess.”

“Oh.” Laura smiles. “Well, if you’d like to reminiscence for old times sake, I can have you get in the tub again.”

Clint laughs. “Unless I’m _that_ dirty, I don’t think I want to relive that part of the night,” he admits, shrugging out of his jacket, and the words are barely out of his mouth before she’s pressed up against him, drawing him in for a kiss.

Clint’s caught off guard, mostly because he hadn’t expected _this_ \-- at least, not right now. He knows he'd be a fool to think that her actions throughout the night weren’t leading to something, but he figured those moments would come awkwardly, and sometime later, perhaps when they had really settled down for an actual hang-out or for movie watching. At first, he thinks that it’s a mistake, and that she’ll pull away. But then Laura is kissing him more deeply, wrapping her fingers around his neck, and by the time she finally pulls away Clint can feel his heart beating out of his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Laura apologizes, breathing hard. “I’m sorry, I --”

He moves forward and cuts her off, crushing her lips against his own. Clint has a fleeting moment of guilt where he feels, again, that he’s stepped out of bounds despite her apparent initiation of the whole thing, but those thoughts are dashed when she kisses him back without pulling away. Clint slams her against the wall with just enough force so that she returns the favor, grinding against him. Almost immediately, he feels his dick start to harden.

“Doesn’t take much, does it?” she asks in between a mouthful of his skin as she licks at his jaw, and Clint grunts.

“Not if you’re going to be like this.”

Laura maneuvers her body so that she can slide her hands easily down his back, fingers working to undo his pants until she can push them off. Without hesitation, she reaches into his boxers and wraps her hand around his cock, causing Clint to moan quietly. It’s been awhile, by his standards -- and his left hand can only do so much -- but he would be lying to say he hadn’t at least thought on some occasion over the past six months what Laura’s hands would feel like when they weren’t trying to stitch him up.

He grabs at her dress and pulls it down until he can stick his hands inside, fondling her breasts; she briefly releases his cock so that he can more or less shove her clothes off of her body and unhook her bra. While Laura goes back to work, jerking him off with an almost desperate force, Clint takes one of her nipples into his mouth and sucks gently, scraping his teeth against her skin. He feels the sharp intake of breath as she gasps, cries out quietly, and he takes that as an invitation to retaliate from his end.

She’s already wet when his fingers enter, teasing her cunt, keeping in rhythm with her own movements as they rub viciously. He can tell she’s going to come quicker than she probably would on a normal basis but he doesn’t care -- at this point, a quickie is better than nothing, and he’s already too much on the edge to think about trying to hold out just so he can appear more experienced. He feels her orgasm the moment she comes, and she bucks against him as Clint arches his head back, feeling his dick go limp with release. He lets his head fall against her shoulder, the tip of his nose meeting sweat-soaked skin and brown hair, and tries to control his breathing.

“Jesus,” he mutters when he feels like he can talk again, lifting his head and meeting her eyes. Laura’s looking at him with something close to affection, an emotion mixed in wonder and slight surprise, something that Clint can’t ever remember seeing in a girl that he’s done this with before.

“Jesus, sorry,” he says after another moment, pulling away and seeing his cum across her hands. Laura shrugs and reaches for a tissue on the table by the door.

“It’s fine,” she says, wiping her palms and then parts of her legs. “You have decent aim, for what it’s worth.”

He laughs in spite of himself, because the comment is more ironic than he can actually tell her.

“That was…” He searches for words, unable to figure out how to continue without sounding incredibly cliche, and Laura smiles tentatively.

“I don’t normally do that,” she admits, filling in the silence, and Clint can’t help but think that she’s not talking about her orgasm. “Really. I don’t --”

“I know,” Clint interrupts, putting his hands on her shoulders. Her skin is still sticky, though mostly dry at this point, tendrils of hair damp where his fingers are pushing them away. “It’s okay. I don’t...believe me, I’m not going to judge you.”

Laura nods and looks down. “It’s been awhile,” she says quietly, and given the tone of her voice, Clint thinks she means more than just the sex part.

“Yeah,” he says, squeezing her gently. “Same here.”

 

***

 

They manage a quick shower, keeping their hands to themselves, and Clint amuses himself by thinking about how they’re only just _now_ trying to be diplomatic about their actions, after everything they’d already done.

“How long are you staying?” Laura asks as she makes tea. She’s changed into sweatpants and a purple tee shirt that looks too big, and her hair is curled up in a white towel.

“A few days,” Clint says, sitting down at the table. He’s re-dressed for the most part but has left off his shirt, figuring at this point it doesn’t matter. Laura _hmmms_ to herself.

“How many times have you been to England?”

“Honestly?” Clint shakes his head. “Probably like, four times. And every trip, I was in and out before anyone noticed.”

“Almost everyone,” Laura corrects, turning around, her eyes wandering to his lower half. Clint brushes his fingers against the scar on his thigh. “So you’ve never really been sightseeing, then? No boat cruises, Museum of Science and Industry, anything like that?”

“Not really that kind of job,” Clint says as Laura brings a mug to the table. She purses her lips.

“Well, I have the day off tomorrow. Probably the only day off I’ll have in the immediate future,” she adds pointedly, taking a drink. “If you feel like sightseeing, or checking out something other than the inside of a restaurant.”

“If I feel like it, huh?”

“Yes,” Laura says conversationally. “I make a pretty good tour guide, for a displaced American. Or at least, I’ve been told as much.”

Clint barks out a laugh, putting his palm on top of hers without thinking. “How can I say no to that?”


	2. Chapter 2

**PART TWO**

 

 

_Everything's fine in the morning_  
_The rain will be gone in the morning_  
_But I'll still be here in the morning_

* * *

 Clint returns to the States with a girlfriend, and he’s not exactly sure how.

He had been ready to accept that this was nothing more than a vacation-filled fling when, during another night at Laura’s place that ended in them both needing an impulse shower, she casually turned to him and said, “so, I guess we’re a thing now.” And granted, it was a long-distance relationship, and Clint could barely keep relationships alive when girls lived twenty minutes away, but Laura hadn’t seemed to care when he brought up the whole “separated by an ocean” thing, instead hooking her hands into his jeans and pulling him down on the bed for another round of sex.

So, yeah: girlfriend, then. And because England was far enough away, no one at work would be ever the wiser about his personal life, something that he finds himself grateful for. He does tell Bobbi, however, mostly because female friends are in short supply where his life is concerned, and he needs someone besides Maria Hill who will tell him that he’s making a huge mistake -- and he knows Bobbi will almost certainly be able to do that.

“You’re making a huge mistake,” is the first thing she says when she meets him for coffee. “A girlfriend? A _long-distance_ girlfriend? Seriously?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, his fingers gripping the mug tighter, matching the color of the porcelain. “Seriously. Also, I didn’t mean for it to happen, okay? It just kind of...happened.”

Bobbi gives him a disapproving look, glasses sliding down her nose before she pushes them up with one finger. “Happened,” she repeats with a small sigh, and Clint knows what she’s thinking, because once upon a time him and Bobbi also just _happened_. “Name?”

“Laura Hanson,” he supplies without hesitation. “Twenty-eight, med student, originally from the Midwest but going to school overseas.”

“Twenty-eight,” Bobbi says dryly and Clint makes a face.

“Give me a break, Morse, I’m only thirty-three. It’s not like I’m robbing the cradle or anything.”

Bobbi rolls her eyes. “And she’s a doctor?”

“Yeah. We met...well, I was in a bind,” he says, waving his hand around, deciding he doesn’t need to regale her with those particular details. “A bind that included her needing to actually help me. It kind of spiraled from there.”

The way Bobbi’s looking at him makes him think that she knows he’s not telling the whole truth, but then again, he also knows Bobbi can read him well enough that she’d have no problem calling him out if she wanted to. They hadn’t been married for nothing.

“Alright. So what makes her different?” Bobbi asks as she takes a sip of coffee. Clint finds himself shrugging.

“She feels more genuine,” he says, his mind zeroing in on Laura’s smile, the way she had looked at him, shy and exhilarated all at once the first time they had sex. “She seems...innocent.”

“And you want her to get tangled up with you?” Bobbi asks but her tone is teasing, and Clint recognizes it as a gentle compliment rather than an insult.

“She’s why I went back to England in the first place,” Clint admits. “When I went on vacation. I hoped...I mean, it was probably dumb, I guess. She could’ve still had a boyfriend, but I wanted to try.”

“You did try. And clearly, it worked.”

“I guess,” Clint says a little uncertainly. “If she doesn’t decide to dump me tomorrow.”

Bobbi heaves out a sigh, leaning back in her chair. “Look, Clint…it’s obvious she likes you. She wouldn’t have made the decision to do this if she didn’t. So let yourself relax and just try to just enjoy it, okay? Who knows? Maybe this could be something.”

Clint nods, scratching his chin. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Besides,” and Bobbi’s voice turns lighter, “you only tried to sleep with her after two rounds of sake. That’s impressive, even for you.”

“Jesus, knock it off,” Clint mutters, but he can’t help his smile. “If I recall, you _enjoyed_ our sex life.”

“Yes, I did,” Bobbi responds with such firmness that Clint wants to laugh. “I never made any secret about that.”

Clint meets her eyes before looking back down at his drink. He thinks about Bobbi more than he wants to admit, but he knows he’d never tell her. If there was one thing he was good at, it was beating himself up, and if Bobbi knew that he was still letting himself mope at times about their divorce, she’d never let him hear the end of it.

“You know I just want you to be happy, right?” Bobbi asks gently, and she places one hand over his own. “So if this girl makes you happy, then I’m happy for you, Clint. You deserve to find someone you really like.”

 

***

 

When Clint gets back to his apartment later that night, he figures it’s too late to talk to Laura with the time difference and so he’s surprised when his phone registers one missed call after he gets out of the shower.

“What are you doing up?” Clint asks when the ringing stops.

“Just got home,” Laura says and he can tell she’s taking off her shoes. He imagines the way she’s leaning against the front table, tugging off her sneakers, possibly pausing to let the weight of the day roll off her body. “Thought I might still be able to catch you.”

“You caught me,” Clint says automatically, flopping down onto the couch, and Laura sighs.

“You’re terrible. Put me on video chat, would you?”

Clint grins and presses a few buttons on the phone, angling it towards his face as Laura emerges into frame.

“That’s better.”

“You like seeing my face that much?” Clint asks and Laura smirks.

“In a long distance relationship, yes.” She glances down at something he can’t see, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “And I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“About my face?” Clint asks, mostly to deflect the growing feeling of dread that he can feel percolating. It would be his luck -- laughable, even -- that after he finally opened up to Bobbi and had started to feel confident, things would go south. Laura sighs.

“No, Clint. About me coming back to the States.”

The words, which aren’t what he expects to hear, get his attention quickly and cause him to sit up a little straighter on the couch. “What?”

“The program is ending next month,” Laura says, not bothering to respond to his reaction. “And I’ve been here almost a year already. So I get to choose where I want to practice next, and all I know is that I definitely don’t want to be this far away.”

“Yeah, okay,” Clint muses. “What about home, then?”

Laura looks a little uncomfortable. “I’m just not sure if I want to be in Missouri for three years, you know? Kind of boring. Not the greatest place to practice, either.”

“Huh,” Clint says, feeling apprehensive to say what he thinks she might be hinting at. “So...I mean, you…”

“So, we’re in a relationship, and I’m thinking of coming to New York,” Laura finishes in an exasperated tone, as if she’s annoyed that it’s taken him this long to realize the point of the whole conversation. Clint’s eyebrows shoot up.

“What?” He asks again, and Laura’s face takes on a look that matches her voice.

“Is this a shock to you, Clint? Me, saying that I want to move closer to you while we’re in a relationship that I’d like to stay in?”

“No,” Clint says quickly, shaking his head. “No, look, I…” he trails off, suddenly wishing they weren’t on video chat and that he _had_ the buffer of an ocean between them. “I mean, you’re sure?”

It’s Laura’s turn to hesitate, running a hand through her hair. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I think I am.”

Clint grinds his teeth together, falling back on the couch. If this was going to be a thing -- a _real_ thing -- well, he supposes he can figure out how to make it work. He’s at least adult enough for that. He glances around his apartment, cringing inwardly as he takes in the mess of clothes on the floor, the dust settling on the top of his television and the dirty dishes that he knows litter the small sink.

“What made you okay with me?” he asks suddenly, and it’s not really the conversation he wants to have over the phone, but the thought has been nagging at him since his conversation with Bobbi. And if Laura is serious about moving here, he needs to know.

“What do you mean?” Laura asks, and even over the slightly fuzzy connection Clint can see the confusion shadowing her features.

“I mean, what made you okay with me?” he repeats. “I guess I just want to know. You taking me in when I was hurt was one thing, but my job is kind of secret agent-ish and everything, and you let me come back into your life when I still didn’t really tell you a lot about me, and...I guess I just want to know why.”

“So you want to know what makes me trust you?” Laura assesses a little wisely, with a tone that makes Clint think she’s probably known what he’s meant since he started talking.

“Yeah,” he admits. “I do.”

Laura drops her gaze and Clint looks down as well, and an awkward silence takes up residence. “You reminded me of a patient,” she says slowly. “One of the most genuine and honest patients that I ever had. Everyone thought she was lying when she talked about where her injuries came from, but I could tell she was being truthful.”

“Yeah?” Clint breathes out slowly.

“Yeah,” Laura answers. “You made me feel the way she did when we talked. That’s...that’s stupid, I know. But I felt comfortable, and I know how to trust my instincts by now.”

Clint shakes his head. “Not stupid,” he says, before lifting his gaze. “My place is kind of small, though.”

Laura shrugs. “I’ll live.”

“And the bathroom sometimes, I mean, the toilet get clogged.”

“I’ve lived in dorms with shared bathrooms. I think I can survive in an apartment with someone I actually care about.”

“Also, I don’t really know how to share a bed correctly.”

“I’ve noticed,” Laura says with a smirk. “Anyway, I’ll probably be sleeping in an on-call room for most of the night, anyway.”

“Oh,” Clint says a little thoughtfully, and Laura rolls her eyes again and swats at his face.

“Don’t get any ideas, Clint. You’re cute and all, but I can’t take _you_ to work.”

 

***

 

Clint makes two more transatlantic flights before Laura officially moves to New York, along with most of her luggage, and when Clint meets her at the airport he feels like a weight has been taken off his chest.

“You look like you didn’t think I’d come,” Laura teases when she steps off the escalator. It’s the only words she manages before she’s rocking up onto her toes, kissing him fiercely, the tote bag carry-on sliding down her shoulder. Clint laughs slightly as he envelopes her in a hug.

“It’s just good to have you here.”

“Tell me about it,” Laura says pulling away. She rubs at the back of her neck. “That was the worst flight I’ve had in awhile. I don’t want to do anything tonight except unpack and eat a ton of bad takeout from that Chinese place you keep talking about.”

“That’s all you want to do?” Clint asks a little suggestively, because truth be told, he feels like he’s had a phantom erection for weeks, and knowing that she’d soon be living in the same apartment as him hadn’t helped in any respect. Laura stops and gives him a look while adjusting her bag on her shoulder.

“I _guess_ I can find time for other activities,” she returns with a sly grin, and Clint suddenly finds himself walking faster, mostly in order to avoid becoming hugely embarrassed in the middle of John F. Kennedy Airport.

“Anything else you’ve got?” He asks as they haul her bags off the luggage carousel and start moving towards the street. The cab line makes him want to scream and Clint knows he could have easily gotten a SHIELD-issued car with no problem, but he isn’t sure that’s an appropriate move -- or rather, whether it was worth lying about.

“This is all of it,” Laura says, struggling with her largest bag. “I shipped a lot of stuff home to the farm. Sold the rest of my furniture. You’d be surprised how little you acquire when you have no life outside of work and scrubs.”

“The farm,” Clint repeats and Laura nods.

“Oh, yeah. I guess I’ve never officially told you. My mom owns a farm.”

Clint lets himself ruminate on that for awhile and then adds it to the repertoire -- Laura Hanson, med student, Missouri and Kansas City-born, natural brown hair, family who owned a farm -- while they wait in a cab line that seems endless, before finally snagging a yellow-covered vehicle for themselves. The ride towards Manhattan is mostly silent and slightly awkward, and Clint wonders if now that she’s here, maybe she’s re-thinking this whole thing. But halfway through their journey, Laura grabs his hand and places her head on his shoulder, sighing quietly as she relaxes into him, and Clint feels his own anxiety start to ebb.

Getting Laura’s luggage up the four story walk-up isn’t exactly the best Sunday Clint’s ever had, but she’s stronger than he’d give her credit for and she does manage to do a fair amount of the lifting. Still, by the time they drag the last of her bags through the door, they’re both dripping with sweat and sore in their arms, and Clint can feel his chest heaving from exertion.

(It doesn’t stop him from turning around and kissing her.)

“ _Clint_ ,” she says as he covers her mouth with his own, and although he thinks she wants to keep protesting, she’s also trying to get his pants off as quickly as possible, so he figures she’s okay with the whole thing. He’s got condoms in the bathroom but they don’t make it that far, satisfying each other with quick hand jobs the way same way they had after their first date, and when Clint pulls away he feels even _more_ sweaty but also, intensely satisfied.

“I guess this is becoming a thing,” Laura remarks once she gets her breath back, and Clint hands her a tissue.

“Quickie sex in the hallway?” Clint shrugs. “If that’s our defining relationship quality, I guess I can live with it.”

That night, they fall asleep comfortably and practically on top of each other, take-out boxes littering the kitchen and the coffee table, and the television too loud in the background from where they’d constantly kept raising the volume, thanks to the fact they kept talking over one another and adding commentary to programs without really paying attention. Clint wakes up somewhere around two in the morning with Laura nestled into the curve of his arm, her hair falling over her face, and she barely rouses when he tries to nudge her. He eventually gives up and hoists as much of her body as he can onto his own while leading her towards the bedroom, helping her onto the mattress and throwing the covers over her body before climbing in the other side. One hand automatically shoots out to wrap itself around his bare torso as he settles in against the pillow, and as he falls back into full slumber, he thinks that this might be the most content he’s felt in a long time.

 

***

 

It’s only a little harder than Clint initially suspects it’ll be to keep the nature of his job hidden. The first week of their official co-habitation is filled with orientation and training and too much shopping, not to mention sightseeing as Clint tries to familiarize Laura with a neighborhood she’s not overly in tune with.

“I know New York, I just don’t exactly know the shady parts of Brooklyn,” she says as they get on the subway one day. Clint sighs.

“Look, it’s not the most glamorous area, I know. But the rent’s cheap and the neighborhood’s fine. Plus, you can’t argue that we’ve got some of the best and cheapest food in the boroughs.”

“I’ll think about that last one,” Laura responds, staring out the window, before lapsing into silence. “I haven’t seen you much this week.”

“Yeah,” Clint says, because this week has been training for him as well -- new recruits and assignments, and getting ducks in a row for another op that he knows will take him out of pocket for at least 48 hours. He still hasn’t figured out how to get around that one, but he’s been too focused on making her comfortable to care.

“But everything’s okay?” she asks and when Clint turns around, he sees the slight worry manifesting in her eyes.

“I promise, everything’s fine,” he says confidently, looping their fingers together. He kisses her on the cheek. “No stab wounds or anything like that.”

She smiles a little shakily and Clint feels his nerves even out. He’s never liked that he’s felt that he had to keep his occupation a secret, especially now that they’re living together. But SHIELD had rules, and SHIELD was unconventional, and, well, there were chances that SHIELD could also be unsafe, if the wrong people knew about the wrong things. It was a miracle, he knew, that Laura hadn’t bothered to be more wary about that and Clint knows his only saving grace is a combination of her personality from working at the hospital -- a “been there, done that” attitude -- and her random family history that for some reason, made Clint’s secrecy far from alarming.

“One day, you’re going to tell me what you do,” Laura says as she reaches into her bag for a muffin she’s bought from the deli. As she bites into it, Clint nods a little too sharply.

“One day, I will.”

 

***

 

The first few weeks of Laura being in New York are the ones Clint never wants to forget.

She settles in and starts her job at Lenox Hill Hospital, and the commute to the East Side is long and the days are even longer, but when she comes home and kisses him too late or too early, waking him up from an unnaturally deep sleep, he feels like it’s all worth it. They go out to dinner when they can manage it with their schedules, they fall asleep in each other’s grips, and they have more sex than they probably should. Sometimes, Laura cooks if she can get home early enough, otherwise she just texts him that she’s at the liquor store and he’ll know that it’s a night where they’ll split a bottle of wine and not much else while watching bad reality television.

He manages to pull rank and push off one of his upcoming trips, much to Fury’s dismay, in the hopes of being able to spend more time with her. He can’t get out of the assignment he’s supposed to lead, however, and ends up apologizing last minute when he comes home from his briefing.

“I gotta go away for a few days,” Clint says, starting to stuff clothes into a bag. “And I can’t get out of it. Will you be okay here?”

Laura looks up from where she’s been reading on the couch, her eyes rising over her glasses. “You ask that as if I won’t be able to contact you,” she says a little stiffly, swinging her legs onto the floor. Clint winces.

“I, uh...you probably won’t.”

“Oh.” Laura purses her lips. “One of _those_ trips, then.”

He can’t read the inflection in her voice as well as he normally can; he can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic and unaffected or if she’s really more hurt about his actions than she’s letting on, but he decides to play it safe anyway.

“You know I would tell you if --”

“If you could, if you didn’t think it could endanger me,” Laura interrupts. “We’ve been over this, Clint. I just try to forget you live some sort of secretive spy life.”

“I know,” he says helplessly, realizing too late he’s been folding the same shirt into squares over and over. Laura eyes him for a long moment, then gets up and puts her hand on his, gently wrestling the shirt away.

“How about I give you a goodbye gift?”

She hooks her fingers into the waistband of his pants and Clint watches the grin spread across her face, and doesn’t bother to hide his erection.

“You’re too good to me,” he mutters as she pulls him against her mouth and then back towards the couch.

 

***

 

There’s nothing particularly exciting about Montreal, at least, nothing he's never seen before.

Clint leads his team through the first few days of the op without much trouble, toughing it out through the dehydration and the bruises, most of which he knows are his own fault. But then, one of his arrows doesn’t quite land its mark, and the guy that he’s chasing gets a bullet to Clint’s chest, causing him to trip down the stairs he’s running on. He hits his head hard on the way down and the vest he’s wearing takes the brunt of the shot, but the bullet grazes his side and if he has to guess, he can pretty much assess he has at least one broken bone somewhere that he can’t see.

His first teammate -- a rather green agent named Weatherby, who Clint finds himself realizing he might have to promote just for his quick response time -- comes to his aid before anyone else does, yelling something about evac. But Clint really doesn’t know what’s going on, largely because he’s too much in pain, and so he lets himself zone out even as he feels the hands of people trying to lift him and jostle him. He thinks about Laura, and her face is the first thing he thinks of when he wakes up, and without even realizing where he is he tries to move, his heart pounding out of his chest as he tries to rationalize his surroundings.

“Contrary to popular belief, you are not going anywhere,” says a deep voice from behind him. “You lead a good team, Barton, and I’ll tell you that much because they managed to get you to extraction and finish the job without you dying on me.”

“I tried,” Clint says although he can’t really talk correctly, his throat feels too dry and too scratchy. Fury raises his eyebrows and hands him a cup of water.

“You did try,” he says a little too conversationally. “In fact, I don’t think you want to know the details.”

Clint swallows, trying to get his vocal chords to work properly again. “Not now.” He really needs Fury to leave so he can try and make a phone call to Laura, but he doesn’t even know how that’s going to happen since he feels he can barely move.

“Your girlfriend was wondering about you,” Fury says after another pause, as if reading his mind, and Clint lets his head fall back against the pillow, groaning.

“What did you tell her?”

“Me?” Fury looks surprised. “I didn’t tell her anything, because I didn’t even know my best agent was seeing someone.”

“Yeah, so what?” Clint mutters, trying to make himself comfortable without having to ask for painkillers. “Is it like, some sort of rule that I need to tell people about my personal life? Don’t you go through all my files anyway?”

“Fortunately,” Fury continues, ignoring Clint’s words, “Morse filled me in. She also enlisted an agent to take care of alerting Ms. Hanson about your condition.”

“My condition,” Clint mumbles, scrunching an eye shut. It hurts to even move his face, and he finds himself wondering about internal bruising. “Does she know? About me?”

Fury stares at him for a long time and Clint wonders if he has to clarify his question, but when he sees a look of understanding settling into the director’s face, he knows that he gets it. “She’s aware that you were hurt,” he says slowly. “But that’s all. Morse and I didn’t think it was our place to tell her anything else, and apparently, she seems okay with that.”

Clint takes in the words, feeling his head grow heavier. “Am I even in SHIELD right now?”

“No.” Fury crosses his arms. “You’re still in Montreal. We had to get you somewhere close to take care of your injuries, but we’ll be transferring you to Lenox Hill shortly.”

“Laura’s hospital,” Clint says and Fury smiles grimly.

“Yes. We’ll chopper you in. Thankfully, your injuries aren’t so terrible that they’re life-threatening.”

“For once,” Clint says with a small sigh, because doing anything else hurts his body. He closes his eyes.

“Barton,” and Clint opens his eyes and tries to focus again, concentrating on Fury’s voice. His supervisor frowns.

“I’m glad you and Morse are at least still on speaking terms, because those years of having you give each other the silent treatment weren’t exactly my cup of tea. But don’t screw this one up, okay?”

 

***

 

The journey back to New York is nothing short of miserable, even though they pump him full of drugs before he leaves and insist on trying to transport him as carefully as possible. Laura’s gotten him a private room, though as he stares out the window, he realizes he’s not even sure if it’s Laura or Fury that he needs to be thankful for. Hell, maybe he needs to start giving more credit to Bobbi. Bobbi knew his hospital preferences better than anyone.

“Clint.”

He inclines his head until he can see her standing by the door, and even from far away, with slightly blurry vision, he notices the way her eyes are shining.

“Hey, it’s like our first date,” he says awkwardly, trying to keep his voice casual as she walks across the room. There’s dirt and what looks like dried blood on her blue scrubs and her hair is tangled into what he assumes at one time must have been a ponytail; her eyes are make-up free and heavy with bags.

“A little worse,” she says finally when she reaches him, trailing a finger along his arm. Clint feels one side of his mouth lift in a smile.

“Ah, not so bad. Not when I have my own place here.”

Laura does laugh at that but it’s weak, and Clint can instantly see her starting to come apart. It unnerves him, because Laura is a doctor, and he knows Laura sees blood and bones and sprains and vomit on a daily basis, and he knows that it’s not so much the injuries that are making her upset, but most likely the fact that her boyfriend has been hurt and she’s got no idea how.

“So this is what you do.”

For a moment, his breath stills in his chest because he’s not sure if she means the job or getting constantly hurt. But he does at least believe that Fury would have realized the reason behind why he’d been keeping his occupation a secret -- that and the fact that if Laura knew the truth, she would likely be more angry than upset.

“Hey, look. Remember what I told you when we met?”

“You’re half an ass?” Laura sits on the bed and Clint watches her movements closely.

“I’ve had worse.”

“Yeah,” Laura says carefully, glancing at his body. “I know. But this…” She trails off. “Your co-worker called and told me what happened. She said she was...part of your assignment? Working on the ground, which is how she knew.” Laura’s voice is a little cautious, as if even she seems unsure about what Clint knows is a blatant lie.

“Yeah,” he says when he finds his voice, because goddammit, this just _isn’t the right time_ , and then, “I’m sorry,” because he absolutely means it. Laura’s mouth sets itself in a straight line.

“You know, I’m okay with the secrecy,” she says finally. “Don’t ask me why, okay? But I am. And I’m okay with patching you up. I trust you, Clint. But this…” She lets her gaze wander over what he knows is his bandaged middle and he sighs heavily.

“I know,” he says, reaching his hand out, not wanting her to finish the rest of the sentence, voicing the fact that he _could’ve_ died and she never would’ve known what happened, let alone where he was. “I know, I do.”

Laura moves closer, putting her head on his shoulder, and Clint tries to focus on her words in order to bring his emotional state back to normalcy. He knows the situation would be strange as hell with anyone else, that not many people would bother to stay with someone -- let alone trust someone -- who didn’t tell them the details of their life. Clint didn’t count himself as the type of person who got caught up in the details, but the fact that Laura was different in that way never ceased to amaze him when he let himself reflect on it.

“Hey, on the bright side, I’m home early,” he says and Laura blinks, water pooling under her lids. Clint squeezes her hand.

“You working tonight? Or are just here because of me?”

Laura shakes her head. “I got off two hours ago, but I didn’t want to leave until you got here.”

“Good,” Clint says. “Because I’m ready to take advantage of this private room, and I’m in no condition to do anything that we usually do when I come home.”

He waits for the words to sink in and then Laura shifts again, climbing next to him in bed while being mindful of his injury. Clint lets her arm drape around him, feeling the warmth of her skin against his, and even though there’s no sound after that, he swears he can feel dampness from where her face is pressed against his shirt.

 

***

 

It takes him almost a month to fully heal thanks to his cracked rib and stitches, but the upside of his injuries is that because Clint has to take it easy, he can’t exactly run around and go to work. He does a few physical therapy exercises in the morning, gets papers and reports sent to his apartment and makes calls when she’s out, but always has things put away and sorted before she returns home. Every time he shoves another file under the mattress or deletes another search history from his computer, he feels a little guiltier and a lot more stupid, even though she never does more than ask how his day was or how he’s doing, health-wise.

And Clint knows enough about their relationship to know that they could probably go on like this forever, if they wanted to. He’s stopped worrying about the whole long-term thing, largely because Laura’s settled into his place in a way that makes him feel comfortable -- so much so that the first time Clint found her dirty underwear on the floor and then walked in on her asleep on the kitchen table with half of her work strewn around, he had almost wanted to take a mental picture to remind himself of when things could feel perfect.

He knows he needs to tell her, though, and also that the longer time passes, breaking the truth won’t get any easier. And Laura certainly isn’t getting any less suspicious, and Clint is slowly realizing that the more time they spend together, the more she’s learning how to read him. He’s never been with anyone who could understand him so well that wasn’t Bobbi, that wasn’t a relationship built up over years of fights and learning to live with each other’s messes, and he can’t decide whether he likes or hates the fact Laura’s broken him so easily.

“What’s wrong?” Laura asks quietly as she rolls over in bed, placing a hand on his most recent scar. Clint lets all his air out in one long breath as she curls her fingers into his skin.

“Nothing,” he lies. “Can’t sleep.”

“Is this about your injury?” Laura props herself up on one arm and Clint carefully turns onto his back.

“Kind of.”

Laura frowns. “You’ve never cared so much about any injury before,” she points out and he instinctively knows that his comment has only made things worse, because while Laura hasn’t seen him in a lot of situations, she’s right. This wasn’t anything life threatening, not to mention when he had met her, he had been pretty much bleeding out and unconcerned about that fact.

“What’s going on?”

“Just...thinking,” he says slowly. Laura lowers herself back to the pillow and removes her hand from his skin, putting it underneath her cheek.

“Wanna talk about what you’re thinking?”

“You’re supposed to be up in two hours,” Clint mutters, squinting into the distance until he can make out the clock on the TV stand. Laura shrugs listlessly.

“I’m already up.”

_It’s not going to happen_ , Clint realizes as they both fall silent. He knows Laura’s not going to let this go until he says something, because now that she _knows_ that something’s wrong, she’ll never buy his response otherwise. The problem is, this wasn’t the way he planned on making his amends.

“I feel like...I owe you,” Clint says, because he feels like he has to say _something_ and it’s strange, this whole vulnerability thing, and he’s not used to it at all. “I don’t want you to spend your life worrying about me.”

“Oh. Well.” Laura clears her throat. “Then tell me why I shouldn’t.”

“Because…” he trails off and in the dark, he can see her eyebrow raise. “Can I tell you something about my past, and will you promise not to get upset?”

“Yes, and no,” Laura says nonchalantly. “Because that depends on what you’re going to tell me.”

“Fantastic,” Clint mutters under this breath. He bites down on his lip before plunging ahead. “I was married.”

“You were what?” Laura’s voice takes on a sharper tone, and Clint stares up at the ceiling.

“I was married,” he repeats. “Divorced, now, but I was married for two years. We’re still close, her and I -- Bobbi. But anyway, I mean, nothing’s going to happen between us. We just talk a lot. Mostly, she tells me when I do stupid things.”

Laura doesn’t respond for a long time, and Clint listens to her breathe in the dark.

 “Well,” she says when she speaks again. “I suppose that’s not the worst thing in the world.”

“Is it?” Clint asks almost automatically. When Laura shoots him a look, he cringes. “I should’ve told you sooner. I know. It’s a big thing...I guess I didn’t really know how to bring it up.”

“There are a lot of big things in your life that I don’t know about,” Laura says, but Clint knows it isn’t a threat. He knows by now that if Laura wanted to get something out of him, she would. Still, the weight of her words stab at his heart, and he knows that he can’t get away with lying to her about his work for too much longer.

“Do you get off early tomorrow?”

“My shift ends at five,” she says evenly, and although her tone hasn’t faltered, he can see the change in her face as her brow furrows, carving a deep crease between her eyes. “Why?”

Clint takes a breath. “Okay. Meet me in Bryant Park after that,” he says a little too gruffly, flopping over onto his other side and effectively ending the conversation. He feels slightly guilty with the way he’s acting, with the stupid, childish manner and abrupt response, and for a moment he considers turning back over and apologizing, even though he knows that doing so will just force her to ask him more questions. He feels the dip of the bed, then pressure and release as she gets up and sits back down.

“What are you doing?” he mutters into the pillow, suddenly afraid that she’s going to leave him in the middle of the night. He hears Laura sigh.

“I’m reading, since I have to be up in less than two hours, and there’s no point in going back to sleep. Can I read, Clint?”

He nods wordlessly, pressing his face back into the pillow and closing his eyes.

 

***

 

Clint doesn’t remember falling asleep, but when he wakes up, he realizes he must have slept in because Laura’s space beside him has long gone cold and the sun is streaming a little too intensely through the blinds. He sits up slowly, going to the bathroom to brush his teeth before returning to the bed where he lets himself settle onto the mess of covers. His phone is lying on the night table, the screen lighting up with what he knows are messages from work, but he pushes the device aside listlessly, suddenly not interested in doing anything for SHIELD.

It unnerves him, and he hates that he’s nervous because as much as it’s his own fault, he knows the situation is somewhat out of his control. His line of work didn’t exactly lend itself to keeping relationships outside of those that were involved in the world themselves; Bobbi had worked because they had an understanding of what the nature of their occupations meant. It was part of the reason he’d been so hesitant to accept Laura’s proposal of being serious in the first place. He reaches for his phone as his mind wanders, hovering his thumb over what he knows is the contact information for Bobbi’s cell. She’d probably try to talk him out of it, or, more likely, would just yell at him for not opening up sooner. He glowers at no one in particular and rolls back up, putting his head in his hands.

_No more lies._ It’s an almost empty promise, because Clint has no idea how he’s going to open himself up enough that he _won’t_ want to keep certain things bottled up, but he’s determined to at least keep his word to Laura where his job and safety were concerned. The rest of that trust would be earned in time.

_No more lies._

 

***

 

Clint’s waiting on the corner of 6th Avenue and 42nd Street well before they’re supposed to meet, largely because he had left Brooklyn far too early and he thinks that if he wanders across the park any longer, he’s going to lose his mind.

“Just be honest,” Bobbi had said when he finally did break down on his way out the door. Clint had internally screamed because it’s not exactly being honest that’s the problem. That’s music he knows he already has to face, but it would have been nice to have reassurance that this wasn’t going to all blow up, and he doesn’t realize he’s as nervous as he is about the whole thing until Laura arrives and he goes to hug her, finding his hands clammy with sweat.

“How was work?” he asks, silently thanking the fact that it’s summer, and hot enough that he can probably pass off his anxiety as weather-related. She shrugs.

“The usual. Had a kid in there today with a stab wound. Family thing, apparently.”

“He okay?” Clint asks, his stomach flip-flopping. Laura’s job didn’t really affect him one way or the other -- he spent too much time in hospitals to be wary of them -- but he never liked hearing about kids’ injuries, especially ones that _weren’t_ illnesses and hit a little too close to home.

“Yeah,” Laura says, slipping her hand into his as they start to walk. “I think so. We’re going to have to put him in protective services, though, since we can’t send him back to his house like that.”

Clint stays silent, fighting off the uncomfortable waves now augmented by her story, and continues to walk after they cross the street, motioning for her to follow as he turns the corner of the next short block.

“What’s this?” Laura asks as he slows to a stop in front of a large skyscraper. Clint shoves his hands into his pockets and Laura looks confused, glancing around, and then up at what Clint knows is the entirely unassuming office building.

“This…” Clint gestures, taking a deep breath before letting it out slowly. “This is what I do. Where I work.”

Laura looks even more confused at his words. “I don’t understand,” she says, and Clint rocks back and forth on his feet.

“SHIELD,” he says finally. When she doesn’t respond right away, he barrels on. “I work for SHIELD. Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement --”

“I know what SHIELD is,” Laura snaps, interrupting him, before turning and walking away. Clint stays where he is for a moment, half frozen in surprise and half unsure how to react. There are millions of thoughts running through his brain, least of which is the fact that she’s aware of his organization.

“Wait,” he says, hurrying around pedestrians to keep up with her quick stride. “Laura, _wait_. Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to lie to you.”

“I don’t care about that,” Laura says shortly as she turns around, finally stopping long enough for Clint to catch a glimpse of her face. There are tears in her eyes but they’re not like the ones he saw in the hospital, he realizes. She’s holding the water back with too much tension; her cheek bones are clenched and her eyes are flashing and she’s angry and for whatever reason, Clint believes her, though he can’t imagine what she’d be so upset about if it’s not the fact that he lied to her.

“Laura.” He reaches a hand towards her, and she recoils instantly.

“Don’t,” she warns sharply, turning away again. “I need to be alone.”

“ _Laura_ ,” he calls again a little helplessly, but she disappears into the crowds of tourists heading towards Times Square before he can get another word out. Clint sags, running a hand through his hair. It’s pointless to follow her, that much he knows -- whether or not she’d actually return to him is something he can’t control, and it would only make things worse if he pursued her and proved he didn’t trust her or respect her wishes. His stomach is still churning from their conversation and Laura’s earlier comment about her hospital charge, and everything suddenly feels like it’s closing in on him too quickly. He backs against the concrete wall of the building, stabilizing himself, then walks quickly towards the door, fumbling for his badge.

“Agent Barton,” the woman at security says in surprise as he swipes himself through but he doesn’t answer, instead getting in the elevator punching in the highest floor number. When he finally gets off, he goes for the stairs that lead to the roof, pushing open the door he knows he’s really not supposed to have access to and emerging onto the top of the building.

He looks out over the skyscrapers and wonders where Laura is. He wonders if she’ll even bother to come home, and he realizes as he continues to stare that he has no idea.

 

***

 

By the time Clint makes his way back to Brooklyn, the sun is starting to dip behind the clouds and the air, which had earlier been sticky and hot, has turned slightly breezy. He shoves the key into the lock and walks in cautiously, though the darkness of the apartment tells him all he needs to know, and he has a sinking feeling it’s not quiet because Laura’s asleep in their bed.

Clint kicks his shoes off and heads to the bathroom, shedding his clothes and standing under the shower spray until his skin feels like it’s going to melt off. When he finally emerges back into the bedroom, he notices the light has been turned back on and that Laura’s sitting stiffly on the bed; Clint sees immediately that she’s still in her shoes and jacket and wonders if that’s because she’s literally just returned, or if it’s because she’s planning on leaving again.

“I didn’t think you’d come back,” he says, because it’s true. Laura looks up, her eyes red, still harboring the same intense look he remembers from that afternoon.

“I wasn’t going to,” she admits curtly. “But I realized that I had nowhere else to go that’s not a hotel or an airport.”

Clint swallows. “I’m sorry,” he says, and he knows he’s repeating himself but he doesn’t know what else to say if she won’t talk to him about why she’s reacting the way she is. “I’ll tell you everything, I promise, if you’ll just tell me why you’re so upset.”

Laura doesn’t answer, slowly reaching for her shoes, easing them off. “I don’t want to,” she says quietly, before shrugging out of her jacket. Clint sighs loudly.

“Laura, come on. I know I fucked up, but give me something to work with here. Please. Just...give me a chance to explain.”

She continues taking off her clothes in silence, until she’s in nothing but her underwear and her bra, then lies down on the bed.

“Turn off the lights,” she says with about as much emotion as if she’s reading a phone book and Clint feels himself growing confused, but does as she asks before getting into bed himself. She hasn’t asked for that, he knows, yet for some reason that he can’t explain, he can sense that it’s okay and that she’s not going to yell at him for doing it.

“I didn’t know you were SHIELD,” she says when he’s lying down, and although she’s facing away from him, he can hear her clearly.

“I know. I told you, my job was dangerous. And I’m sorry,” Clint says. “Even if I didn’t have a choice, I shouldn’t have lied to you.”

“You shouldn’t have,” Laura says, and her voice sounds sad. Clint waits for another moment and then inches his fingers towards her, letting them come to rest gently on her hip.

“And you’re right,” he confirms. “But that’s not what this is about, is it?”

There’s a longer silence, and when Laura answers, her voice has dropped even further. “No.”

“Care to explain?” Clint asks but he keeps his voice neutral and non-threatening, the way he would if he were trying to get information from a child or someone who was innocently caught up in more torrid affairs, because he genuinely does want to know what her problem is and also because he’s still not sure if he’s the cause of it. Laura turns over, finally meeting his eyes.

“SHIELD took my dad away. A long time ago.”

Clint blinks in the dark. “SHIELD...what?” He instantly racks his brain, trying to think of mercenaries and bad guys that he’s taken in over the years, trying to figure out if any of them might have had any connection to the woman he’s lying in bed with. There are too many names, though, too much history and too many files, and he can’t settle on anyone automatically.

“They took him away,” she continues a little dully. “I was seven.”

“I…” Clint trails off, finding he doesn’t know what to say. “I didn’t know.”

“Why would you?” Laura asks. “It’s not like that information is out there. And he had an alias he used, so you wouldn’t find him under my family name,” she continues as he opens his mouth to ask the next question.

“Why?” He prods instead, because it’s the only question he can formulate. Laura shakes her head.

“Some stuff relating to the mob connection,” she says softly. “I think. My mom never told me, not even when I got older. I didn’t even know who had taken him until I started doing some research. I remembered the symbol from their uniforms.”

Clint feels his heart rate speed up. “Look, we...I don’t know what your dad did,” he says, moving his hand to her cheek. He’s both surprised and not when she lets it stay there, when she doesn’t flinch away. “Maybe he really didn’t do anything. But I can tell you that maybe it was a mistake, because we don’t go around snatching families from their houses unless they’re considered a threat.”

Laura falls quiet again, and Clint thinks they might soon be able to start a contest for longest amount of uncomfortable silences during a conversation. “Do you kill people?”

“I --” Clint stops, swallowing, remembering what he had told himself about _no more lies._ “Sometimes, yeah. But not because I want to. It’s always in defense. Or because they’re a danger to something greater, something that can hurt the world or people that I care about.”

Laura puts her lips together and shakes her head. “That’s not right.”

“I don’t care whether or not it’s right,” Clint says a little hotly, withdrawing his hand from her body. “It’s my goddamn job. And it’s the only job I’ve ever been remotely good at, the only one where I’ve felt I’m a little bit worth it. And if you don’t like that, then you can go back to your damn cornfields.”

It’s too much, he knows, but he can’t help it. The anger is boiling inside of him, everything he’s felt since he woken up -- the guilt, the fear, the frustration at not knowing why she had been so upset when she left him in the middle of Manhattan with barely a clue that she would actually come back and give him a chance to explain himself. He sits up abruptly, suddenly anxious to get away, and a hand closes around his arm, yanking him back to the covers with one firm move.

“Clint. Stop.”

He wants to retaliate, he wants to let out the feelings he’s been carrying around all day, but her voice is soft and serious and without knowing why, he finds himself starting to calm, the temper dissipating as quickly as it had escalated. Laura moves her hand to his shoulder, massaging the skin there gently, letting her fingers trail over to his hairline.

“He was like you, you know. My dad.”

“Yeah, did he go get himself shot all the time and lie to you?” Clint asks deprecatingly. He’s shocked when Laura nods.

“Yes,” she says simply. “He traveled so much for work, he was always getting in trouble and getting hurt somehow. My mom, she was so worried...but he never was. He walked in the house one day with a gash on the side of his head and just started joking about how we had to give him a superhero nickname or something.”

“That’s why you trusted me,” Clint says slowly, the realization dawning on him. “That’s why you never really asked questions about my work or my life. Because your dad was the same way.”

“I was worried at first that maybe you would go away,” she continues, playing with his hair. “But you were capable and you seemed to be able to take care of yourself okay, even when you got hurt. And then I find out that you’re just like one of the people that took him away in the first place,” Laura finishes a little sadly, and Clint finds his throat tightening, like a noose that’s found its way around his neck and refuses to let go.

“I’m not,” he says, because it’s all he feels he _can_ say, and at least he knows that he’s not lying about it. “I swear. You know me.”

“I do,” Laura says, suddenly curling into him, as if she’s trying to find something in the moment that makes her feel secure. Clint lets her move, running his hand up her spine.

“When you said awhile ago that I reminded you of that patient...was that true?”

“Yes,” Laura says, nodding against him. “I didn’t lie about that. I just didn’t feel like telling you about my dad.”

“You didn’t have to,” Clint offers automatically. “Tell me about your dad, that is.”

“I realized I needed to.” She tightens her arms around him. “You deserved to know. For us.”

_For us._ The words rattle around in his head and settle somewhere by his stomach, and Laura squeezes his hand, the smallest of confirmations. She still wants to be with him. She still trusts him, at least enough to stay. She still wants to forgive him.

“Just...no more lies, okay?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, bending his head so he can kiss her. He closes his eyes. “No more lies.”

 

***

 

Things get better, after that.

There’s still more than a little tension between them but with the chasm having been opened, Clint finds it a lot easier to talk about things he might otherwise keep to himself, which in turn makes him feel even closer to Laura. There’s a certain sense of relief that comes with not having to sneak off to work, with not having to worry about referencing a job or turning down an assignment or wondering if she’ll care if he goes away for too long a period of time, and eventually, they settle into a groove where she doesn’t ask too many questions about his life but always trusts that he’ll tell her the more important things.

“Let’s get married,” he finds himself saying one day when they’re tangled in bed; it’s a rare Saturday morning in late September when Laura’s not on call and she stares at him like he’s lost his mind.

“Seriously?”

Clint shrugs. “Yeah. What’s the problem?”

“The problem…” Laura trails off, her look intensifying. “The problem is, we can’t just _get married_.”

Clint sits up at that, letting the covers fall off him. “Why not?”

“Because.” Laura follows suit. “I mean, we haven’t even officially said I love you.”

“Oh.” Clint shrugs. “I love you,” he adds with a smile, because he knows that he does, even if they’ve never found a way to say the words out loud. Hell, he thinks he might have known he’s loved her from the moment she trusted him enough to take her to dinner, when she had every right to hang up on his call. He leans over to kiss her deeply and when he pulls away, Laura’s smiling.

“I love you too,” she says, tracing a hand over his jawline. “But this is...we need a ring. We need a plan.”

“Tomorrow,” Clint says automatically. “Tomorrow, first thing. We’ll go to a jeweler's downtown, you’ll pick out something you want and I’ll officially do the cheesy down-on-one-knee thing so that you can send a photo to your mom.”

“Clint…”

“Look, I know it’s crazy,” Clint breaks in, because the more they talk about it, the more it does seem crazy -- and yet also more right than anything he’s proposed in his life, even when he asked Bobbi the same question. “I mean, we’re _both_ crazy. Who else would have trusted me in the first place when I wouldn’t tell them about my job? Who else would pick up and move to New York after only knowing someone for six months?”

“You did this before,” Laura says slowly, and Clint sighs, hearing the hesitancy in her voice.

“I know I did.”

“And now you’re divorced,” Laura continues carefully. Clint runs his tongue over his teeth.

“Yeah. And I can tell you that I only married after a year or so of waffling on whether or not I wanted to. It was something I _thought_ I wanted.” He pauses. “This isn’t something I think I want...this is something I _know_ I want.”

Laura looks down, her fingers playing with the covers, and Clint tries to calm his anxiety.

“And this feeling is telling you that you really want to get married to me,” she says, lifting her head to stare at him, as if she’s trying to figure out if there’s any way this could be some sort of cruel joke. Clint holds her gaze, hoping that she can see what he knows is the genuine response coloring his face.

“Yeah.” He moves closer. “I really do. Laura...I do.”

“Oh my god,” Laura mutters, pulling the covers over her head. “That is the most terrible proposal I have ever heard in my life.”

Clint pulls back the blankets to find tears in her eyes, and kisses her cheek.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For reference purposes, the location of SHIELD headquarters in this fic comes from the first Captain America -- the same building Steve wakes up in after he's rescued from the ice, which, according to notes, is an actual headquarters.


	3. Chapter 3

**PART THREE**

_Some nights we open up the flood_  
_And some nights we are lost_  
_And some nights we’re choking on the words_  
_But some we light on fire_

* * *

 

They vacation to Bali, just to get away.

It’s what Clint calls a honeymoon, but both of them have a hard time actually remembering that they’re technically more than boyfriend and girlfriend now, even though Clint sometimes takes out the courthouse papers and looks at them, usually when Laura’s in the shower in in a place where she can’t make fun of him.

(Sometimes, though, she does catch him looking when he can’t help it and then sits down and looks with him, running her fingers over their signatures.)

Laura is surprisingly okay with the stealth ceremony, which catches Clint off guard, until she turns around one day and says that she just cares about being _together_ and not so much about what other people think.

“Besides,” she says as they order breakfast and coffee, “I don’t really feel like involving my entire family in this.”

“Any reason?” Clint asks with a curious edge, because he’s spent enough time wondering if anyone in her life is really okay with an impromptu marriage, especially an impromptu marriage to someone who doesn’t have much to offer except a messy apartment and a highly classified job. Laura shakes her head.

“I learned a long time ago that while I love my family, and I always will, I’m better at life if I figure things out on my own.”

Clint notes the tone of her voice and files her words away, mentally reminding himself to come back to them when they’re not in the middle of eating.

“I’m also thinking of changing my name,” Laura continues and Clint raises an eyebrow.

“Changing...to my name?”

Laura looks a little exasperated. “What _other_ name would I change it to?”

“I dunno.” Clint averts his eyes and stirs his coffee with a little more vigor. Somehow, the thought of Laura changing her name, knowing that she would choose to link herself to him by giving up part of her individuality, makes everything real, even more so than court papers or rings or sex.

“If you think this is me giving up anything about who I am, you’re wrong,” Laura says a little sharply. Clint looks up, and he knows his thoughts are spreading over his face. Laura puts a hand on top of his, her ring glinting in the overhead light. It’s a simple ring, but she had requested simple, and it had truthfully been a relief to feel like he didn’t have to go the overly impressive route like he had done with Bobbi.

“I know my value, Clint. I love you, and I want to be a part of your life in this way.”

He nods, picking up his coffee and taking a sip.

“Laura Hanson.”

“Laura _Barton_ ,” she corrects with a small grin. Clint groans, slipping on his sunglasses.

“It actually sounds good on you. You know I hated my name my whole life?”

“I don’t know why.” Laura grins. “It’s a nice name. It’s a lot less generic than mine.”

“Try having a brother with the same first letter,” he grouses. “Barney Barton. Well, Charles, really. Charles Bernard, but no one calls a kid that when they're five."

Laura rolls her eyes. “If we ever have kids, then, no names that start with the letter B. Is that better?”

Clint smiles. “Deal.”

 

***

 

“You got married,” Fury says when Clint comes back to work a week later, his tone straddling between incredulous and unimpressed. Clint, who still feels like he’s on vacation a little bit, puts his feet up on the desk.

“Yep.”

His boss stares at him for a long time before speaking again. “That’s both the smartest and the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Which is a lot, coming from you, since I’ve done it before,” Clint points out, swinging his feet back to the ground. “And I appreciate the sentiment. But I’m mostly letting you know because if something happens, I’d rather not die in a ditch without her knowledge.” He tosses a folder onto the desk: updated emergency contact papers, everything he’d jacked from his files that he could find from when he officially joined SHIELD. Truthfully, if it had been his choice, he probably wouldn’t have bothered with the formalities of it all. But once they had returned from their trip, Laura was insistent on making their partnership official, and this had been part of the deal. Besides, the more Clint thought about it, the more he realized he couldn’t really argue with her. It wasn’t like he never got himself in a tight spot.

“You know, you could’ve gone directly to HR with these,” Fury notes, sifting through the updated forms. Clint shrugs.

“Yeah, but we both know I hate HR. And I wanted to see your face when I told you the news.”

Fury sighs, leaning back in his chair. “You really like this girl, don’t you?”

The question catches Clint off guard, not because he’s unsure of his answer, but because it’s not often that his boss indicates he cares this much. And while they’ve worked together long enough that Clint can read between the lines of a conversation, it’s also not often that Fury lets his guard down, unless Clint’s on the verge of death somewhere.

“Yes.” As he says the words, he can’t help but smile, and he thinks maybe he’s not the only one who just wished for some damn happiness in his life. “I do.”

 

***

 

Bobbi finds out about the marriage not long after, and Clint’s prepared to be read the riot act. His ex-wife, however, takes the news rather well.

“Am I ever going to meet her?” she asks casually as they fall into step in the lobby. It’s rare Bobbi makes appearances at SHIELD’s offices anymore unless it’s for meetings or to pick up paperwork, and it’s even rarer that Clint’s around for their schedules to coincide. “I mean, if you proposed to her after only a year, that means there’s more to you guys than a sex life.”

“Yeah, well.” Clint swipes his card as he leaves the building. “Now that she actually knows what I do, maybe she’ll find out one day that my ex-wife still kind of works with me.”

“Kind of,” Bobbi says with a small smile. “You know there are talks of transferring me out to Los Angeles, right?”

“Yeah,” Clint says again, slipping on his sunglasses, because he can’t figure out if that development would be good or bad. He’s become far too used to having her around in times like these, even if he knows that it’s not the healthiest way for him to remove himself from the divorce. Still, it does help knowing that despite the fact he regrets what happened in their relationship, he’ll never actually fall for Bobbi the way he once did -- and she’ll never fall for him the same way, either.

“It’s not permanent just yet,” Bobbi continues, as if reading his mind. “But there’s a lab out there and they want me to do research for at least another two years. I’ve been apartment searching.”

“So you’re just going to up and leave me and my problems alone in the big city?” Clint asks half-jokingly. Bobbi rolls her eyes.

“Consider this your heads up to start finding some female friends that _aren’t_ from past relationships,” she says, stopping at a coffee vendor at the end of the block and slipping a dollar bill over the counter. “Or, you know, talk to your new wife. I’m sure there are lots of eligible girls in the market for friends. Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

“You’d be surprised,” Clint mutters as Bobbi hands him his drink, and she smiles at him.

“I bet I will be.”

 

***

 

Laura’s mom comes to visit three months after they officially get married and one month after Clint has finally recovered from another op that’s left him more than a little knocked around.

“She’s nice,” Laura offers while unloading food, because Clint hasn’t moved from his spot near the door since he walked in from his physical therapy appointment. “Clint. You’re going to have to meet my family eventually.”

“What makes you think I don’t want to meet your family?” he asks casually as he walks towards the fridge. He can almost see Laura’s eyeroll as he grabs a beer and maneuvers the top off.

“Because I know how you feel about getting to know people.”

Clint turns around at that. “Not entirely true,” he defends. “I was fine getting to know you. And that girl you brought over for dinner last week,” he adds as an afterthought.

“I mean people that are important to my life,” Laura corrects, meeting his eyes, and Clint lets out a long breath.

“Are you going to tell her about changing your name?”

Laura looks thoughtful. “I will,” she says. “But I don’t know if I’ll do it right now. We don’t even have the official documents processed yet.”

Clint makes a face. “Your mom’s going to hate me.”

“I highly doubt that,” Laura says flatly, but she’s frowning. “Is this about your job?”

“What else would it be about?” Clint asks, leaving his beer on the table and walking into the bedroom. He doesn’t bother to wait for her to respond, and the frustration threatening to spill over makes him feel dangerously volatile. Maybe he was wrong to get involved with someone who already harbored bad blood thanks to what he did for work. Maybe it was silly to even consider the possibilities of being together, even if she had moved past that.

“You know, my mom didn’t hate SHIELD the same way I did,” Laura says and Clint knows without looking that she’s followed him. “She was angry at the time, but she never resented them. This sort of thing...it’s different when you’re a child. And the fact that she never re-married has nothing to do with anything that happened.”

“Sure,” Clint says bitterly, sinking onto the bed. “Until she asks what I did last week and I tell her about the night that I had to shoot someone because they wouldn’t cooperate, or about how I spent three days in the hospital last month because I missed my rendezvous. Again.” He can’t see her face but he can tell she’s clenching her jaw, can imagine the way she’s struggling to keep up the facade of trying to be tough and annoyed, despite the fact that she wants to sit him down like a child.

“Why do you use a bow and arrow, Clint?”

His head snaps up and he stares at her, trying to figure out the root of her question. “That’s how I learned to defend myself. In the circus. It was a weapon I was given, and it was something I was good at.”

“And you never thought to use a gun,” Laura says. Clint shrugs.

“I _have_ used a gun. I’m trained in firearms, remember?” He pauses, his forehead creasing. “I don’t understand what you’re getting at.”

“What I’m getting at is, the guy who I love sometimes has to do things he doesn’t want to do. But his weapon of choice is not a bullet. It’s an arrow. It’s something he can control.” She stops talking to allow her words to sink in. “It’s something that he’s tamed and learned, and something that he can make choices with. When you shoot a gun, you can’t help where your bullet goes. But when you shoot an arrow, you don’t _have_ to shoot to kill.”

Clint swallows, feeling his face flush. “I don’t know,” he admits, though he _wants_ to believe her. Laura sighs.

“Contrary to popular belief, Clint, you’re not a bad person.” She leans her head on his shoulder, wrapping one arm around him. Clint feels the sting of the silver band from where her hand closes over the part of his skin not covered by his shirt, and tries to reconcile her words with his own thoughts.

 

***

 

Gail Hanson is nice, and like her daughter, she’s also overly punctual. And so even though Clint’s only five minutes late getting out of the shower, he feels instinctively like he’s set the evening off on the wrong foot when he walks into the kitchen and finds the two women already talking quietly at the table.

He’s unsure how to approach the conversation, and even more unsure of how to break up what looks like a meeting that’s completely intimate. Part of him wants to laugh at the fact that this seems like the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, when he knows that he walks into what most people would consider war zones without blinking.

“So you’re Clint,” Gail says, turning as he shifts his foot against a particularly creaky floorboard. “The man who married my daughter.” Clint catches Laura’s eye as her mother gets up and he nods, squaring his shoulders.

“Clint Barton, that’s me.”

“Laura’s told me a lot about you.” Gail reaches her hand out and Clint takes it, shaking her wrist as firmly as possible.

“Good things, I hope.”

“Interesting things,” Laura cuts in. “He travels a lot, like dad did.”

As soon as the words leave Laura’s lips, Clint feels his hands become clammy. He pulls away from Gail’s grip, suddenly becoming interested in the kitchen table.

“Not really like your dad,” he says when he raises his head. Gail is looking at him with an expression that’s so much like the one he’s come to recognize from Laura, it’s uncanny.

“I already know what you do, Clint. You don’t have to explain it. Or hide from it.”

“Oh.” Clint shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans, the nice ones, the only ones he owns that aren’t covered in dirt and aren’t stained with coffee. “Well, I only travel for a few days at a time, really.”

“Do you like your job?” Gail asks and Clint blinks.

“Yes,” he says, because it’s the truth.

“What do you like about it?”

“I…” Clint looks past her again. This wasn’t entirely the interrogation he had been expecting, and beyond that, he has no idea if Laura’s mom is trying to pump information out of him while he’s feeling vulnerable, or if she’s actually being genuine in her curiosity. “I help people,” he says finally. “I like helping people, and saving people. It’s something I can take home with me at the end of the day that makes me feel good about myself.”

The words are all wrong, they sound wrong, like he’s trying to make himself sound better than he is, but he says them anyway and manages to catch Laura’s small smile. _Relax_ , she says silently with her eyes and Clint does, because he knows she would tell him if something was wrong.

“I’d like to hear about some of your assignments, if you don’t mind,” Gail says as she sits back down and pulls out a chair. Clint nods slowly as he takes a seat, and Laura’s hand immediately finds his own.

 

***

 

Five hours later, Gail Hanson has returned to her hotel in Manhattan and Laura is cleaning up the kitchen while Clint is taking out the trash.

“That went well,” Laura says after he’s dropped the large black bag by the door and returned to find her undressing in the bathroom.

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“No,” Laura says, stepping into the shower. “I’m not. You should have seen her reactions to my previous boyfriends.”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know about them,” Clint grumbles, sticking his hands underneath the faucet. “And I’m not your boyfriend, I’m your husband.” He hears Laura sigh quietly as she pulls the curtain closed.

“She likes you, Clint. She would have told me right away if she didn’t. Maybe she’s not happy with the whole secret marriage thing, but…”

“But?” Clint prompts, taking off his shirt. He hears Laura make a thoughtful-sounding noise over the rushing water.

“Well, no matter how she feels, that’s not her decision,” Laura says matter-of-factly. “It’s mine. I love you, and I married you. She can deal with it.”

Clint doesn’t answer, stepping out of his pants and boxers and shoving the curtain open in response. Laura’s arched backwards into the shower spray, her hair damp and curling around her shoulders.

“You _just_ showered,” she says as he steps in fully. Clint shrugs.

“So?” He reaches out and runs his hands over her arms, down her elbows, feeling her shiver slightly under his touch. “I also just took out the trash.”

“Then you’re dirty,” Laura responds a little playfully, a smile tugging at her lips. Clint lowers his head, kissing her as water streams down the side of her face, running into their mouths. The temperature is turned up high, because Laura likes hot showers, but her body feels cool where it presses up against his. As if on cue, he feels the beginnings of an erection.

“I was thinking.” Laura moves her lips away from his mouth so she can lick the water away from his ear and Clint takes one of her hands and directs it towards his lower extremities, feeling her fingers wrap around his cock.

“About what?” he asks as she starts to stroke him lazily, rubbing his dick against her own skin.

“About how much I wanted to do this during dinner.” She pulls away so she can meet his eyes. “You looked _really_ good at dinner.”

“Yeah?” The answer comes out more as a groan than as actual words. He honestly figured he had looked more like a nervous wreck, though he had hoped he didn’t come off that blatant.

“Yeah,” Laura says quietly, running her other hand over the scar on his thigh. “It reminded me of the first time we had dinner together. I really wanted you to take me home.”

Clint feels a tremor run through his body and lets her push him against the wall, the tile icy against his spine.

 

***

 

Fury sends Clint away on Laura’s birthday.

He gets the memo sent to his phone, sees it when he rolls over and wakes up, and immediately pulls the pillow back over his face. It would figure, not only because Clint’s been planning something for at least a month, but also because he had told Fury that he really did not want to be on any assignments during the last week of September. Somehow, he doubts his boss is completely to blame; Fury signed off on all the reports and decided where and when Clint should be sent out but he didn’t _actually_ set up his assignments unless it was a job that he had a personal investment in. Stalingrad, as far as Clint could tell, wasn’t that. The reports had him investigating an old orphanage that had been masquerading as a secret training center for spy-like assassins. Clint suspects the reason why he’d been put on the detail was because he had the best track record of being in and out of potentially dangerous situations like these with relative ease.

Which is why when he walks into Fury’s office later that day, he’s completely blindsided.

“I told you I didn’t want to be away right now,” Clint almost whines, and Fury looks like he’s trying not to strangle him outright.

“Your job doesn’t exactly allow for you to be able to tell me when you do and don’t get to go into the field,” Fury says shortly. “Though, if you’d like, I can see if there’s an extra desk in accounting for you.”

Clint glares. “Not the point. Can you talk to Hill or whoever the hell put me on this assignment and tell them to switch me out?”

“No,” Fury says simply. “Because _I’m_ the one who put you on this assignment, Barton.” At his words, Clint feels himself snap.

“For fuck’s sake, _why_?”

Fury lets out a long exhale, ignoring the outburst. “Because you’re you, for one.” He walks back to his desk and picks up a folder, offering it out. Clint throws up his hands.

“What in the hell does that mean?”

“It means that I need the best agent on my team to make sure this gets taken care of correctly,” Fury responds curtly, while motioning for Clint to open the file. “This orphanage, whatever it is, shouldn’t still be active. However, in recent months, we’ve had reports of a few girls who have apparently survived the experiments they were a part of. They’re dangerous. Lethal. Known only as Black Widows. They’ve been going around and killing all over the country, but no one’s been able to pin them down.”

“And you think I can do that?” Clint asks warily, suddenly realizing what Fury’s asking, and how high the stakes of this mission are going to potentially be. _So much for being home in time for dinner_.

Fury shakes his head. “Not necessarily. But we want to make sure this place still isn’t functional, and if there’s any evidence that we can gather, we want that, too. There are unconfirmed reports that whoever was experimenting on these girls was using a watered down version of the same serum that Captain America received back in the 40’s.”

“Great,” Clint mutters, letting his eyes trail over the report.

“And essentially, on the off chance there _is_ still someone on the premises, we need to bring them in. Alive.”

Clint lets himself absorb his words as Fury stops talking. “Sir?”

“The Council doesn’t exactly agree with my train of thought,” he continues. “They’d prefer we kill whoever we find. I need someone who will have the judgment to make that different call.”

“So you’re asking me to disobey orders?” Clint asks slowly and a little suspiciously, though he already knows the answer.

“I’m telling them one thing. I’m sending you in to do another.”

“And there’s no other agent that can go,” Clint responds. Fury sighs.

“Let me be honest with you, Barton. You do a lot of stupid stuff, I’ll vouch for that. But you do know how to save lives when it matters, and so I _want_ you on this mission.” He thins his lips. “Case closed.”

 

***

 

Laura’s still at the hospital when Clint returns home with a pit in his stomach; the past few weeks have been hell on both of them for no reason other than the fact that they’ve been tired and overworked. It’s the first time since Bobbi that Clint’s spent an extended amount of time with someone when they’ve also been more than a little irritable, and he thinks that the only thing keeping them sane is the fact that their jobs allow them to spend enough time apart, in that they’re not constantly tripping over each others’ feet.

Clint heats up a frozen dinner before settling down in front of the television, picking up the remote, listlessly clicking through a few channels until he finds a reality television show that looks mindless enough. He’s in the middle of shoving the last of the food in his mouth when he hears the door open, and waves his free hand behind him.

“Hi,” he calls tiredly, sitting up straighter. They’ve worked out enough of a system for Clint to know the little things, like the fact that when Laura comes home, she wants to sit with him before doing anything else. Sure enough, as soon as he removes his feet from the cushion, she joins him.

“How was work?”

“Interns are starting next week,” Laura says with a small yawn. “That’s how work was.”

“Sorry,” Clint mutters, reaching out and putting a hand on her shoulder. He pulls her against him and she sighs a little as she rests her head against his chest.

“You?”

“Meetings,” he says a little evasively, wondering how long it’ll be before she prods him further. Laura curls her fingers into his shirt.

“What kind of meetings?”

“Just...meetings,” Clint says lamely, because he’s too tired to put up a front and Laura pushes herself away, hair falling into her eyes. “What?”

“Don’t _what_ me,” she says. “Something’s up. I can tell, and I’m tired, and I don’t want to pull it out of you.”

Clint rolls himself forward until he’s sitting up straight as well. “I gotta go on another trip,” he says and Laura closes her eyes, bringing her hands up to rub the sides of her skull.

“Fine. Where to, now?”

“Stalingrad,” he says slowly. “Next week.” He cringes inwardly as he watches her eyes open, her face falling slightly.

“That’s my birthday,” she says a little shortly and Clint nods.

“I know. I tried, honestly, I asked --”

“Forget it,” Laura snaps, getting up. “I know you tried. It’s fine.”

It’s not fine, but if he’s learned anything from their relationship, it’s that the worst thing he can do is argue with her when they’re both on edge.

“I’m sorry, alright?” Clint knows he can’t mask the irritable tone in his voice and tosses his empty tray onto the floor before getting up and heading into the bedroom. He doesn’t even bother getting undressed or turning on the light before he stretches out on the bed.

“Is this always going to be your answer to everything?” Laura asks after a moment when she joins him. She doesn’t turn on the light either, and Clint has to push himself up on his elbows to see her in the dark.

“Is _what_ going to be my answer to everything?”

“Running away. Stopping the conversation before it starts.”

“Rather than fighting, yeah,” he admits bitterly, lowering himself back to the mattress. “Didn’t work out for me so well in the past when I tried to fight with my wife.”

“Well, I’m not a fan of avoidance, either,” Laura says irritably. “I get enough of that at work. When I come home, I want to come home to a husband that will _talk_ to me.”

Clint breathes out slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the dark. “Did we make a mistake?” he asks suddenly.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Laura sounds confused both by the question and the change in conversation, the randomly quiet break from their argument.

“Forget it,” Clint mutters and Laura suddenly seems to understand, because her voice drops.

“No,” she says quietly, moving forward. She sits down next to him. “I don’t regret marrying you, Clint. Or moving here. I love being with you. I just...I wish things were easier.”

“You wish I didn’t have my job,” he confirms, and Laura swallows.

“Only sometimes,” she says, keeping her voice low. “I’m proud of you. I am. I just worry that one day this is going to get to be too much...not just for me, but for you.”

The tremor to her voice -- the one he remembers picking up on so long ago, the first night they met, before he even knew what he was getting himself into -- alerts him immediately to the fear that he knows she must be harboring, the one that she might never actually say out loud but that probably resides underneath all her other emotions.

“Hey, look.” He crawls his fingers across the covers and takes her hand. “If that ever happens, I promise that I will walk away. If it ever gets too much, if you’re ever threatened…” He trails off. “That’ll be it. My last project.”

“You promise?” Laura asks slowly, tightening her fingers. Clint feels a little sick because he _can’t_ promise, but he sure as hell can try to remember his own words.

“As much as I can.”

“And you won’t go to Stalingrad and find some other girl to take home when you get hurt?”

“Definitely not,” Clint says. “You’re the last girl whose floor I’m going to bleed out on for a long time.”

Laura laughs brokenly and Clint pulls at her hand. “You know I love you?”

“I know,” Laura says, putting her head against his collarbone. “I love you too.”

 

***

 

Stalingrad, Clint quickly learns, is not going to be an in-and-out mission.

He’s got one other agent on his back and it’s a sour-faced man from overseas, who Clint isn’t used to, which in turn causes him to feel supremely unsafe. He likes knowing who he’ll be partnered with, even if it’s someone new, because at least he’s familiar with them from training or at least one meeting. But it was either the annoying accented transfer or nothing, and Fury had made it clear that he didn’t feel comfortable with Clint going to Stalingrad alone.

 _“With your track record, Barton? You’d disappear and no one would know if you’re kidnapped or dead. Consider this my insurance policy.”_ And Clint had considered that to be mostly true, so he grits his teeth and plays nice in the field, and at least the guy has the good sense to follow directions and not ask too many questions.

Their first day is mostly recon, a sweep of the establishment for the information Fury’s looking for as well as a search for anyone that might still be on the premises. They find nothing, however, and Clint sends his partner back to the hotel, figuring he’ll stay and check out a few loose ends, a kind of snooping that he hadn’t wanted to do with someone looking over his shoulder.

Which is when he sees the girl.

It’s quick -- blink and you’ll miss it -- but for all that Clint sometimes misses his marks in stupid ways, he knows his eyesight remains unparalleled. He stays completely still, hidden in the shadows, though he doesn’t think whoever is around has seen him. He can see her, though, her silhouette and the curve of her hair in the soft breeze that ripples through the building, the way she darts around as if she knows there’s a reason to suddenly be on guard.

“I saw someone,” he says when he puts in a call later that night, when he’s back at the hotel and safely ensconced in his room, surveying his stash of arrows.

“Who?” Hill asks sharply.

“A girl,” Clint responds. “Kind of short. Long hair. I couldn’t tell if she was enhanced or not, but she moved pretty quickly.”

“Find her and bring her in,” says Hill almost immediately. “Don’t call for back-up if it gets messy. We’ll have extraction on stand-by near your location.”

Clint sighs, throwing the phone onto the bed, before picking it up again and calling Laura. It rings five times before going to an answering machine, which he’s not surprised about. The time difference left something to be desired, but there was a perk that came with Laura’s odd hospital hours, in that sometimes when he was overseas he could get lucky.

“Hey, it’s me,” he says after the message instructs him to speak. “I know it’s the 20th, so I wanted to say happy birthday. And, uh, it looks like I may be out here a little longer. I’ll let you know when I’m on my way home but you know where to find me if you need me. Love you.”

He hangs up and sits down on the bed, glancing at his mission bag, before rooting through it and taking out his wedding ring. At least Laura had understood his refusal to wear it in the field and around the office, but she had also insisted that he take it with him whenever he traveled.

“If something happens, I want to be able to identify you,” she had said one day as they were getting ready for bed. “I don’t think that’s too much to ask.” It wasn’t, and it was also the point in which Clint had realized there was more to the relationship than just a hasty proposal. Clint twirls the ring in between the fingers of one hand and then reaches back into his bag, removing a small picture. It’s a stupid photo, all things considered, a stealth capture taken during their honeymoon while they were in the middle of walking to their next destination. Laura’s turned halfway towards the camera, the beginnings of a smile spreading across her face, one hand pushing back her hair.

He puts the photo inside one of the inner pockets of his vest and shoves the ring back into his bag.

 

***

 

They’re back at the warehouse the next day, though Clint hasn’t exactly told his partner all the details of why they’re re-searching the establishment, aside from the fact that there might be someone of interest living there. He’s not entirely certain that the guy won’t go crazy and shoot without telling anyone, and besides, Clint can live with being a little less than truthful when he knows that’s what he’d been asked to do, anyway.

Both of them have just climbed the stairs to the second floor, moving across a corridor overlooking what Clint thinks must have at one time been some sort of barracks situation -- or maybe a lesson room -- when something catches his eye. The girl he had seen last night (and he can confirm now it’s definitely a girl; her long hair is falling into her face and she’s clearly visible) is frozen on the floor below them, crouched low to the ground. Her limbs are locked, tension-filled, but she doesn’t seem agitated or on edge and her entire stature reminds Clint of an animal biding its time before getting ready to pounce on its prey.

He turns immediately, raising his bow, his heart shooting into his throat when he realizes that his partner’s had the same reaction.

“Got her,” he hears the man say into his comm and Clint curses silently.

“Negative, do not shoot,” he responds sharply. “Subject needs to be taken in alive.” There’s no response on the other end of the line and Clint curses again, watching out of his peripheral vision as one finger find its way towards the trigger.

He snaps his body sideways and shoots without hesitation, sending an arrow straight into the other man’s arm, and his partner howls in pain before collapsing onto the floor. Clint has a brief moment of guilt about the whole situation before he snaps out of his thoughts and hurries towards the rail, peering over the edge, feeling his stomach drop as his fears are confirmed: as far as he can tell, the girl has disappeared.

“Hey,” he calls out after a moment, ignoring the whimpering cries behind him. “If you’re still here, I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m gonna lower my bow if you come out, okay?”

He bends down slowly, leaving his bow on the ground along with the arrow currently strung in it, and then on second thought takes off his quiver as well, depositing it onto the floor. For a long time there’s nothing except silence combined with muttered, agonized curses, and then a voice from behind makes him jump; he’s been scouring the ground floor with so much scrutiny he’s completely forgotten to take in his surroundings and has missed her coming up behind him.

“Turn around.”

He does so and is immediately met with his own bow and arrow pointing in his direction. Up close, he can see her clearly for the first time -- her long hair is tangled and falls in waves around her shoulders, a russet, reddish color that looks about as dank as the space they’re currently trapped in. She’s wearing clothes that are too big for her body and her face looks young, but her eyes and features are chiseled with what Clint easily recognizes as years of growth that don’t quite match what he assumes is her younger age.

“You’re good with a bow,” he says levelly, holding up his hands, because he can tell from the way she’s handling his weapon that it’s not the first time she’s picked one up. The girl doesn’t move.

“Who are you?”

“Clint Barton.” He tells the truth because he knows it means nothing to her, and because it’s better than lying when he needs her to trust him. There’s a small crease between her eyes.

“Did they send you to kill me?”

“No.” That one actually is a lie, though there’s still a bit of truth to it. He really _wasn’t_ sent to kill her, but she didn’t need to know that the rest of his organization didn’t feel the same way.

“Then I’m of no use to you,” she says shortly, her words clipped. “I’d only be good to you if I was dead.”

“I doubt that,” Clint responds, hands still raised. “You seem to have survived on your own pretty well here, and that takes skill. Skill that’s worth learning about.”

“And you’re not here to kill me?”

“Swear to god,” he says a little more firmly. She still looks uncertain, shifting her gaze to the side.

“What about him?” she asks, nodding slightly towards Clint’s partner, who’s stopped writhing but is now holding his injured arm, his eyes shooting daggers from where he’s been knocked to the ground.

“Ignore him,” Clint says, knowing that he’ll have to deal with that particular consequence eventually. Shooting someone wasn’t exactly a tap on the wrist kind of offense, but he has a sliver of hope that Fury might understand. “He’s not really with me.”

“Fine. What do your people want?” she asks after another beat and Clint doesn’t bother to ask how she knows about SHIELD. The emblem is on his uniform, after all, and he has to consider that this isn’t the first time that she’s been tracked.

“Information,” Clint says as calmly as he can. “But if you come with me, I can protect you.”

“You say that as if I’m going to just _come with you_ ,” she says a little scathingly, still holding onto his bow. “I’m not that stupid.”

“I know you’re not,” Clint says, catching the way her fingers tighten around the string, and he finds himself wondering if Laura will kill him if he manages to get shot with his own damn weapon. “But if you come with me, it’ll get you to America, right? And afterwards, I promise we won’t send you back.”

“So you’ll take me out of my country and then just turn me loose in another one?” He can hear the skepticism in her voice and he doesn’t blame her; it’s a proposition that seems too good to be true, mostly because it is.

“If you cooperate and give us the information we want, then yes,” he says, before pausing. “Is there anyone else here?”

“No,” she says slowly, and he sees her hand waver slightly, though her voice doesn’t. “Just me. I’m the only one left.”

Clint measures the intensity of the standoff before stepping forward, putting one foot in front of the other at a pace that’s downright glacial. Her hand tenses again but she doesn’t shoot, and he finally gets close enough to reach his arm out, closing his hand around the bow.

“What’s your name?” He asks as he pulls back gently and she lets go of his weapon, wide green eyes defiant as they meet his own.

“I’m called...they call me Natasha.”

 

***

 

Hill has a car sent to their location, which brings them to a deserted patch of farmland a few hours away, where a quinjet is waiting. Clint has managed to patch up the other man’s injuries as best he can, though he’s a good enough shot to know that he hasn’t hurt him enough for it to be a real emergency. Natasha, her arms crossed in front of her, encased in vibranium handcuffs, moves calmly as Clint leads her on board, though she makes it clear that Clint’s the only person she’ll engage with.

The thing is, Clint knows she’s dangerous, and that she’s also probably the most lethal person he’ll ever meet. He’d done enough research about the program she had trained under, the “Black Widow” label that came with her skills, and he knows that logically, he should be downright terrified that she’s complying without much effort. Something in the way she moves, though, in the way that she holds her body, reminds him a little bit of himself -- brash and dangerous but also fragile, made of more rubber than sharp edges, if you were to sand them down enough.

“Smile, Natasha. You’re on candid camera,” he jokes as another agent sticks a small device in her face. She sits across from him, strapped in tight, everything mostly bound though Clint has a sneaking suspicion that she could probably get out of her restraints easily if she really wanted to. But he’s exhausted and between jet lag, the assignment, and worrying about the time he’s spent away from Laura, he doesn’t really care enough to be concerned. He leans back against the wall of the quinjet, stretching out as much as he can against his seat belt so that he’s slightly more comfortable, and lazily pulls the photo from inside his vest, staring at it until his eyes feel heavy.

“Who’s that?” Natasha asks suddenly, as if it’s killing her to show interest in something that she can’t help but be curious about. It’s also the first time she’s spoken since they’ve boarded, and Clint jumps out of instinct before relaxing again.

“My wife,” he says, folding the picture in half and shoving it back into his uniform. Natasha raises an eyebrow.

“You’re married.”

“Yes,” Clint says tiredly and he can almost see her comprehending the words, trying to understand them, piecing them together and taking them apart.

“I’ve killed men who are married.”

“Yeah, I know,” Clint says, his mind raking over the files that he’s read about her. Married men weren’t the only people she’d killed, or for that matter, slept with.

“I like them,” Natasha says nonchalantly. “The married ones. They know how to treat women.” She cocks her head. “Do you know how to treat women?”

Clint finds himself suddenly unsure if Natasha’s fucking with him or asking him the question because she _wants_ to fuck him, and realizes he doesn’t know what to do with either of those options.

“I treat my wife just fine,” he says firmly, choosing to keep the conversation neutral, though the words send a stab of pain through his stomach. A ghost of a smile emerges on Natasha’s face, a combination of a look that’s both deadly and reassuring at the same time.

“I’m sure you do. Married men, they all treat their women the same,” she says, before lapsing into silence. Clint lets the conversation sear into his brain as the quinjet bumps along through the sky, trying not to dwell on her words.

 

***

 

When they land in New York, Natasha is shuffled off the landing pad, sharing one more knowing smile with Clint before she disappears into what he knows is some sort of holding room. It’s unnerving, and part of him wants to follow, to make sure they don’t do anything they’re not supposed to given that he’s more or less lied about the whole “being taken in safely” thing. But he also trusts Fury and Hill have pulled the appropriate strings in order to make sure nothing happens right away aside from some routine testing.

“We’ll call you if anything changes,” Hill says as she meets him halfway off the quinjet and her eyes say the rest. “Promise. You did good, Barton. Go home and get some sleep.”

Clint nods, heading to his quarters to change out of his uniform before calling a SHIELD car, which takes him all the way back to Brooklyn. By the time he climbs out of the passenger seat, he’s realizing just how much his muscles hurt. It was almost ironic, given that he’d escaped this particular mission with no real injuries and yet somehow, he feels like he’s been beaten and bruised enough to span three lifetimes.

The lights are on in the apartment when he walks in, but there’s silence, and further inspection finds Laura asleep on the couch, one hand pressed underneath her cheek. Clint stops in front of her, feeling a smile work its way onto his face, before gently shoving her legs aside so that he can sit down next to her.

“Hey,” he says quietly, raking a hand through her hair. She stirs languidly.

“Hey,” she says hoarsely, swallowing down sleep as she cracks open one eye. “You’re late.”

Clint laughs quietly, leaning down to kiss her. “I may be late, but I couldn’t stay away.”

“Mmm.” Laura shifts, blinking slowly as she comes awake. “How was your trip?”

Clint hesitates, trying to find the right words. “Interesting,” he says when he settles on something that’s mostly true, and Laura makes another noise as she curls into herself again.

“Find any friends?”

“Not really,” Clint says, moving his hand to her neck, massaging her shoulder gently. “Got you a birthday gift, though.”

“Oh, yeah?” Laura turns over again, sitting up as Clint leans over and hands her a small wrapped package.

“Yeah,” he says, holding it out. “Unfortunately, Stalingrad didn’t have much in the way of jewelry but they did have this cool little guy.”

Laura manages a laugh as she tears through the thin wrapping, coming away with a black and white wooden animal, what looks like a cross between a monkey and a zebra, with colorful markings and a long tail. She places it on the coffee table.

“That’s so ugly.”

“I know,” Clint admits with a smile. “I’m thinking maybe I can start a collection of really kitschy gifts from all my travels. Like, one from each airport or something. We can --”

His words are cut off by Laura’s mouth as she leans over, and given the fact that she had been mostly passed out when he came home, Clint expects a quick, patented kiss. She lingers, however, taking her time, and he recognizes the signal for something more.

“I missed you,” she says quietly when she finally pulls away, sounding a little breathless. Clint feels his own breath quicken, images of his mission and his worries about his new charge all but forgotten.

“I missed you too,” he mutters, grabbing her by the back of her head and pulling her close again. This time, their tongues tangle almost immediately, a desperate hunger, like they’re trying to reclaim everything that they’ve missed in the few days of being apart, like they haven’t explored each other’s bodies in far longer than Clint is aware of. He works on her shirt, shoving it over her head easily before unhooking her bra, letting his hands splay along her breasts, twisting first one nipple and then the other, feeling his own arousal as she arches and moans. Laura’s hand finds its way down his pants, struggling with the zipper of his jeans before successfully pushing them down past his hips. Clint breaks the kiss enough to get up and step out of them, taking off his own shirt in the process, and then holds out his palm. Laura smiles slowly and lets him pull her up as they relocate to the bedroom, where he pushes her down onto the bed and climbs over her, spreading his legs wide and brushing his now-hard cock against her stomach.

“You’ve got new ones,” Laura says quietly as she moves her fingers over his back. Clint feels the tips ghost over a recent bruise and he shudders.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“No,” Laura’s voice turns serious and she grips his skin more tightly. “Don’t ever be sorry for that.”

He swallows and goes back to work on her chest, trailing his hands down her stomach and hips before teasing and fingering her cunt, walking two fingers inside. He can already tell that she’s wet and that confirmation doesn’t do anything to help with the fact that his cock is practically rock hard.

Clint glances up quickly and gives a small smile before lowering his face, pulling slowly at the folds of her clit with his teeth. He alternates between fast and slow, a touch and go of pressure that he knows will keep her on the edge without sending her over. The covers move with them as Laura digs her hands into the blanket and then Clint abruptly repositions himself as he gets up, standing above her and grabbing her by the ankles. Gently, he pulls her to the edge of the bed, placing her legs on his shoulders so that she’s essentially straddling him, and so that he can penetrate her more easily.

“Wait,” Laura says a little breathlessly, and Clint stops moving at the sound of her voice. “You’re going to pull out, right? I don’t...we don’t have any condoms.”

“Of course,” he says, blinking fast, before running his hands over her legs. He exhales as easily as he can and finds her eyes. “Hey, trust me, okay? I’d never do anything like that to you.”

Laura nods, her head falling back again, and Clint waits half a second to see if she’ll want to stop. When her hips buck up he takes that as a sign to continue and pushes himself into her, rocking his hips, angling for the same need he knows she’s struggling to find.

Clint jerks his body up and down as hers increases its speed, and he can feel her legs growing sticky, slick from exertion, he can see the droplets of sweat beading across her chest the same way that he can feel them on his own. He’s distinctly aware of the pressure that rolls through him, that he knows is signaling the start of his orgasm, and pulls out quickly, coming all over his hands as Laura arches up and away, rolling back on the bed.

“Okay,” Clint says, trying to get his breath back. “Okay. Fuck. You okay?”

“Yeah,” Laura responds. Her chest is heaving but there’s a smile on her face, and a drowsy look in her eye that Clint knows means he’s both satisfied her and exhausted her. _Not bad for an almost ten hour flight_.

He heads to the bathroom to wash himself up, sticking his body under the shower briefly for good measure. When he comes back out, still mostly wet but not bothering to care, Laura’s already in bed. She’s snagged one of his over-sized workout shirts as her pajama top -- the one that’s XL and falls almost to her knees -- and something swells in his chest.

“I’m glad you’re home,” she breathes as Clint climbs in next to her and settles against her skin. She grips his arm, sighing contently as she nestles against his chest, and he closes his eyes.

“Me, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has read and/or left feedback so far! It means a lot to know that you're reading and enjoying the story, and your support is appreciated and helps motivate me for future chapters. :) And thank you to my personal cheerleading squad. I adore you.


	4. Chapter 4

**PART FOUR**

_So go far beyond where we stand_  
_No matter the distance_  
_I'm holding your hand_

* * *

 

Natasha Romanoff, age 32, is an agent who works for KGB -- or at least, she was, at one point in her life. Right now, she’s not really anyone, and that’s as much as Clint gets from her files.

The only good thing to come out of Stalingrad is that Fury and Hill both are in agreement that Clint should stay at headquarters, largely because he’s the only one Natasha will talk to -- which means no surprise assignments in foreign cities, which means Clint gets to stay with Laura without being shipped off in the middle of another life event, or during a night that he really, really doesn’t want to leave.

“One day, you have to take me along to one of these trips,” Laura teases. Since his return from Stalingrad, Clint notices that things have been less tense between them -- at least, Laura seems more easygoing about conflicts that concern his job. He laughs.

“You’d hate these trips, honestly. And not just because you’d be worried I’m going to kill myself,” he adds as an afterthought. “There’s barely any time to do anything. We wouldn’t even _get_ to a quickie.”

“Pity,” Laura says sarcastically, shooting him an eye-roll, but her lips quirk upwards. “We could take a trip. A real trip,” she says pointedly, because they both know Bali, as relaxing and spontaneous as it was, hadn’t been a true vacation. “We can go somewhere undetected. We can sit on the beach and drink margaritas and beer and just get _away_ for a bit.”

Clint chews on his bottom lip because the prospect of just getting away, of being alone with Laura and not looking over his back for shooters or monsters or rogue assassins is more than a little enticing. And yet…

“You know I can’t,” he says sadly. “At least, not now.”

“ _Not now_ is a long time,” Laura answers and her voice says what her words don’t. Clint swallows.

“I know,” he agrees a little helplessly.

 

***

 

Before Clint arrives at headquarters, Natasha’s interrogated by two other agents who leave the soundproof room cradling bleeding hands and he finds himself clenching his own palms after he opens the door, taking a seat across from her at the metal table.

“For someone who told me they would follow orders, you’re pretty defensive,” he notes, raising an eyebrow. Natasha grins.

“I don’t like people asking me about things I don’t intend to answer.”

“Fair enough.” She only has regular handcuffs around her wrists this time but aside from the bloodstains on the table, dripping quietly and slowly onto the floor, there’s no evidence that she’s anything more than docile.

“So you gonna talk to me?” Clint asks after a long silence makes it clear that she’s not going to be entirely forthcoming. Natasha shrugs.

“Maybe. Are you gonna get me out of here?”

“Eventually,” he answers tiredly. “Why don’t you tell me who you are?”

“You know who I am,” Natasha says evenly and Clint fights to keep his frustration under control.

“Try again. Tell me why the person I elected not to kill made me realize she had more to offer than a skill set.”

The words fall out of his mouth before he can stop them and Natasha reacts at that, her eyes widening slightly. She sets her mouth in a straight line, spitting out the words as if they’re sharp objects.

“Natasha. Romanoff. I trained under my handlers in the Red Room. That’s where you found me. But you already knew that.”

“I did,” Clint says, nodding. “What I don’t know is how you got there.”

Natasha swallows, spreading her hands apart as much as she can given the restraints of the cuffs. “I don’t remember. I was taken from my family when I was a lot younger. My father...he might’ve sold me,” she says and her voice is so low that Clint has a feeling she’s actually telling the truth. Still, it’s not enough for him to go off of, and certainly not enough to prove that she trusts him enough to be released.

“That’s all?” Clint asks. Natasha’s spine goes rigid.

“That’s all that I can tell you, Agent Barton.” She’s shooting Clint a look that seems rooted in distrust, her voice turning cold, and Clint brings his hands up in front of his face.

“Okay,” he says evenly. “Look, I believe you. Okay?”

Natasha keeps her stiff posture but manages to lean back in her chair and Clint feels the back of his neck prickle with unease, like he’s supposed to be worried she’ll turn on him even though something in his brain tells him he’s probably the only person she wouldn’t bother to hurt.

“How is your wife?”

“Why do you care about my wife?” Clint asks sharply, his defenses snapping into place before he has a chance to realize what his tone sounds like. Natasha doesn’t look angry, however.

“I just wondered.”

“Nice of you to care about so much,” Clint says, pushing back and away from the chair. Natasha shrugs listlessly.

“Just a question.”

“My _wife_ is fine,” Clint responds as he leaves the room and it’s only when he gets outside that he lets himself breathe, shoving his back against the wall and closing his eyes. He feels a modicum of regret at being so curt with her when he knows he should be doing the opposite --  trying to build on the foundation he’d put down back in Stalingrad, being honest, however bad of an idea it was to bring his personal life into work. But the overarching concern unnerves him because no other mark, not even Bobbi, has ever asked about his relationships in a way that implied they cared so much.

Clint composes himself and then heads to Fury’s office.

 

***

 

Four days later, there are still men with broken fingers and despite the fact that Natasha’s been more than willing to actually talk, Clint’s no closer to getting any information out of her that’s would be considered helpful. And even though Clint hasn’t actually been sent into the field in over a month, he feels more tired and run down than he has in ages; he knows he’s barely hiding the bags under his eyes or for that matter, the five o’clock shadow that’s crawled its way over his chin when he wasn’t looking.

“What’s going on?” Laura asks as she rubs the muscles in his back. It’s after dinner and they’re sitting on the bed with the lights dimmed and he’s overdue for a massage; Laura’s not quite as trained in the masseuse department as he’d prefer but she does know enough about working back muscles to understand what he needs to relieve stress -- not to mention where to touch him so that she won’t exacerbate an old injury.

Clint lets out a slow breath as Laura presses into a particularly sharp knot in his upper back. “Remember how I went to Stalingrad on that mission?”

“Yes,” Laura says, kneading her fingers into his spine. “Of course I do.” Clint flinches as her hands work along his skin.

“Well, I went there to find someone,” he continues slowly. “Someone that SHIELD wanted to kill. I was sent to save them, so I did. I brought them back.”

“Them,” Laura repeats a little cautiously. Clint groans.

“Her. A girl. And don’t worry,” he continues quickly as Laura’s hand shoves itself into his spine a little too roughly. “She’s...trust me, she’s not someone I’d ever consider getting to know.”

“Why is that?” Laura asks, her voice taking on a curious tone despite the fact Clint knows that everything about their conversation at the moment is rooted in skepticism. He snorts.

“She’s an assassin. Or, well, she was. She was trained under a program that taught her to kill. To be immoral. To do things worse than what SHIELD would ever do to people.”

Laura remains silent for a long time, continuing to massage him. “I see,” she says quietly, when she finally speaks. “And that’s why you look like you haven’t slept in days?”

Clint shakes his head. “I’m the only one she’ll talk to,” he says, hunching forward as Laura’s hands smooth out over his back. “But she still won’t cooperate. It’s like trying to break down concrete.” He inhales sharply. “I promised her that we’d let her go if she gave us what we needed. And if I can’t break her, then we send her back to Russia, or worse. I break my promise _and_ my trust. And I fail my assignment.” He feels his chest start to seize up as he says the words that have been bouncing around in his head for far too many days, and as he closes his eyes he hears Laura move around on the bed.

“What makes her trust you?” Laura asks seriously, and when Clint opens his eyes he finds that she’s facing him, her legs drawn up Indian-style, a set of manicured toes poking out from underneath her knees.

“I don’t know,” Clint admits. “The fact I didn’t shoot to kill?”

“Clint, think about it,” Laura prods gently, taking his hand. “I let you into my house without knowing who you were, who you worked for, or what you even wanted. Why did I do that?”

“Because…” Clint searches for words. He remembers vividly their conversation about Laura’s patient, about her dad, but he has a feeling that’s not the answer she’s looking for. “Because I was genuine?”

“Because when I looked at you, I didn’t see a man who was made of something that could hurt me,” Laura says gently. “I saw someone that cared.”

“And you could get all that from my face?” Clint asks sarcastically, trying to steer the conversation away. Laura rolls her eyes.

“Ironically enough, your face would imply that you want to murder me. But I saw other things.” She traces a hand down his cheek, over his lips, lightly brushing at his stubble. “The way you talked to me. The things you said to me. You don’t realize it, Clint, the way that you interact with people. But it’s very easy for people to trust you, if they know what to look for.”

Clint raises his eyebrows. “Really?”

Laura smiles. “Really,” she says softly, keeping her hand on his face. “Go talk to her like you would talk to anyone else. The way you would talk to me. Treat her as a friend and not as someone that you want information from.”

“I’ve been _doing_ that,” Clint protests, though as he thinks of Laura’s words, he wonders if maybe he hasn’t been doing enough of it. Laura sighs.

“Then try harder,” she says, her tone unapologetic. “You know who you are.” Her skin is soft where it meets his own and he turns his head to kiss her palm as Laura leans into his touch.

 

***

 

Clint arrives at Natasha’s holding room with the intent to “try harder” branded into his mind; he’s brought an armful of supplies including notebooks and pens and post it notes that he’s jacked from someone else’s desk. The clock above the wall reads close to five and he makes a mental note to pick up dinner on the way home -- Laura had been late for work due to the fact that she’d overslept, and then had been slower than usual getting out of the apartment thanks to not feeling well. Clint thinks he’d probably be more concerned given the fact that Laura never gets sick, despite her job, but he also knows they’ve both been running themselves into the ground mentally and physically as of late. Clint’s honestly surprised he’s managed as well as he has without falling over from a random cold.

“Are we playing arts and crafts?” Natasha deadpans, her eyes lighting up with something akin to danger when he enters the room. Clint sighs.

“Not really. That’s for later, if you actually cooperate.”

“I am cooperating,” Natasha replies, folding her arms, and Clint catches the way she winces as the cuffs dig into her skin. The lab results that Fury had ordered had been returned earlier that day and there had been no trace of whatever serum had been used on other recruits, which meant that despite her superior senses and fighting abilities and eyes that looked like they’d been aged ten years, Natasha was entirely normal. Fury had alerted Clint, and Clint planned to keep that information in the back of his mind, using it to his advantage.

“We’re going to play a game,” Clint says, sitting down and spreading his hands. “You like games?”

“Yes,” she says coyly and Clint smiles grimly.

“Good. Here.” He shoves a pad of paper across the table. “It’s called a trust exercise. You don’t want to tell me things because of whatever reason, and I don’t exactly feel comfortable sharing my own secrets. So you write down what you want to say, and that way you don’t have to say them out loud. I’ll read them. And in return, I’ll give you information about myself so that you can get to know me. Fair fight, win and win.”

Natasha stares at him while he talks and he can see her eyes narrowing, the way her brain is trying to figure out if she wants to buy into this or not. Clint holds his breath as he offers out a pen, and after a long moment, she reaches forward as much as she can and grabs it with one hand. Clint exhales, and leans back in his seat.

“Good. Now, write down something that you want to tell me.”

Surprisingly, she obeys immediately, sloppily scribbling a few words down onto the paper in front of her before shoving it across the table. Clint takes it and reads it, then reads it over again, and sighs.

“You have nice arms,” he says dryly and Natasha smirks.

“Well, you do. I thought it would be strange to tell you out loud that since you’re married and all.”

Clint snorts, pushing the notebook back across the table. “Try again,” he says, tempering his tone, trying to remember what Laura had told him about trust. He closes his eyes briefly, trying to imagine Laura sitting in front of him instead of Natasha, attempting to convince her that she should take him in, that she should call him, that she should marry him. “I just want to get to know you. That’s all.”

When he opens his eyes, he finds that Natasha has pushed the paper back towards him. This time, there’s a lot more writing, and some of it is more slanted than the rest. Clint picks it up and regards it carefully.

“They trained me to be a weapon for my country and I killed people for that purpose,” he reads out loud. “There are dozens of girls like me who became assassins but they’re all scattered around Europe right now. Maybe dead. I’m the only one left.”

He looks up and Natasha meets his gaze, her eyes set firmly in his direction, and he knows within a second of looking at her that she’s not lying. “Thank you,” he says, tearing out the piece of paper and pocketing it.

“You said you’d give me something,” Natasha says in a strangled tone, as if she’s suddenly not sure what to do with herself now that he’s gotten her to break down at least part of her wall. Clint laughs shortly.

“I did,” he admits, taking a post-it note and scribbling. He folds it up and leans across the table until she can reach, watching her face.

“I lied to my wife about what I did when I first met her.” She frowns, and Clint shrugs.

“It’s a dangerous job,” he says levelly. “And I wanted to protect her. So I made a choice. Maybe it wasn’t the smartest choice, but I’m sure you understand.”

Natasha swallows. “I do,” she says quietly. “Thank you.”

Clint nods. “Hopefully we’ll get you out of here in a few,” he says as he gets up. “Just let me talk to my boss, alright?”

Natasha nods back but there’s no recognizable spite in her actions, Clint notices, and no snide remarks that follow. He smiles to himself as he leaves the room.

 

***

 

Clint stops at the corner store near his apartment and picks up soup, then on second thought also picks up a gallon of Laura’s favorite ice cream. It’s not really much of a celebration, but he figures at least he can treat her a little bit, as a thank you for helping him get somewhere with Natasha for the first time in over a week.

“Hey,” Clint calls out when he walks inside. The lights are on and he can see Laura’s bag on the floor, and he finds himself slightly surprised that she’s home already given how late in the day she’d left. “Hey, I’m home.” He puts the ice cream in the fridge and leaves the soup can on the table, and then wanders into the living room towards the small bedroom. Laura’s not there either, and Clint wonders if she’s gone out without telling him before he realizes the bathroom door is tightly closed, light streaming from underneath.

“Laura?” He calls out tentatively. There’s no answer and also no telltale sign of a shower or toilet flush, which makes a part of him want to panic. But when he tries the knob, he finds that it’s not locked, which means that whatever she’s hiding from isn’t so terrible that she’s scared of facing him.

Clint pushes open the door and finds her sitting on the floor with her knees drawn up, back pressed against the tub. It’s a position that makes her look vulnerable, but Clint has a feeling she’s not as transparent as she looks.

“Laura?”

She stares up at him with unfocused eyes, and it takes Clint a moment to realize she’s definitely been crying.

“Sit down with me,” Laura says before he can react and he does, swallowing down his words. Whatever was wrong, however bad it was, she at least wanted to tell him and seemed calm enough at the moment that it wasn’t going to destroy her.

“You okay?” He leans back against the tub with her and when he takes her hand, realizes that it’s shaking. “Hey, what’s up?”

Laura turns her head and Clint furrows his brow. “Come on,” he urges to her red-rimmed eyes. “Talk to me. What happened?”

He watches Laura take a breath, as if she has to gather enough air for what she wants to say out loud.

“I’m pregnant.”

“You -- what do you mean you’re pregnant?” Clint asks, feeling the color drain from his face. Laura wrenches her hand away and when she speaks again, her voice is hard.

“I mean that clearly, when I asked you to pull out and trusted that you _would_ , you didn’t.”

“No,” Clint says immediately. He racks his brain, trying to remember the circumstances of the night that now feels like far too long ago. “No, I pulled out before I came. I remember, I swear. I _know_ I did,” he defends, his mind racing. Laura shakes her head.

“Well, whatever you did, it didn’t work. I haven’t exactly gone and slept with anyone else in the past year and a half.”

“Christ,” Clint mutters, slumping against the tub. The room is spinning and his heart is beating out of his chest and he feels dizzy, like he’s on the verge of spiraling into a panic attack. “Are you sure? I mean --”

“I work in a hospital, I’m a doctor. I recognize my own symptoms and to prove I wasn’t seeing things on my own test, I even made another resident look at my results,” Laura cuts in bluntly. “Yes, Clint. I’m sure I’m pregnant, thanks for checking.”

He struggles to get his lungs under control as he focuses on the other side of the bathroom wall, trying to figure out what to say that won’t sound like a lame attempt at comfort.

“I...I thought you wanted kids.” It was something they had talked about briefly, at the beginning of their relationship, when everything seemed new and shiny and endless. Clint wasn’t sure children were completely made for him, given what he had gone through in his past -- and the thought of imagining himself as a father was far beyond what his brain could process and accept. But he also knew Laura did want them one day, and so he had been willing to consider the prospect.

“Not now,” Laura responds harshly, as if Clint has said something insulting. “I’m twenty-nine, Clint. I’m still trying to figure out my career. I wanted to wait, I wanted us to be settled, I wanted --” She stops as her voice falters, breaking over the last few letters. “I can’t do this.”

“Hey,” Clint says with a frown, grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling her close. It freaks him out slightly, how much she’s falling apart when he’s known her to be nothing but competent and levelheaded in pretty much any situation. “You can. You can, and I’m going to be here.” He kisses the top of her head and Laura snorts.

“You,” she says sourly, straightening up. “You, with the job that takes you away in the middle of the night...you’re going to be here.”

Clint blinks, feeling stung, and he wants to protest before he realizes he can’t, because she’s right. As much as Clint has tried, had tried, SHIELD came first. SHIELD always came first, because he had a responsibility and because even if Fury promised him things he couldn’t promise anyone else, he still couldn’t control the nature of Clint’s job that was so dependent on outside factors.

“If you’re having this kid, then I’m going to be here,” he decides, grabbing her hand. Laura doesn’t reciprocate, the dead weight of her palm hanging heavy in his own.

“Would you walk away?” she asks, looking up at him. “If I asked you to, because of this? Because of me? Would you walk away?”

Clint feels his insides freeze up at her question. “I can’t answer that,” he says slowly and Laura looks like she’s going to cry again. She doesn’t, but he can see the film of water holding court above her lids.

“That’s what I thought.”

 

***

 

Clint’s celebratory evening plans are more or less dashed as Laura’s not that hungry, not even for ice cream, and Clint doesn’t blame her. He also decides to hold off on the news about Natasha’s progress as he knows it’s probably the least appropriate topic he could broach right now, and instead gives Laura space as she showers and then as she reads, and they go through the motions of getting ready for bed without much talking.

In the morning, Clint wakes to the sound of her throwing up in the bathroom and feels entirely guilty, electing to go in and make himself somewhat useful. Before has a chance, however, the door opens and Laura walks out slowly, pressing a towel to her mouth.

“I’m going to work,” she announces as she grabs a pair of scrubs from their shared dresser. Clint, shifts so that he’s sitting halfway up in bed and watches her closely.

“Okay,” he says uncertainly. “Do you need anything? I mean, I can get stuff while I’m out today, if you want…”

“No,” she finishes. “I’ll be fine. I’m pregnant, not _incapacitated_.”

“Right,” he mutters under his breath, watching her dress and then walk out of the bedroom. “Just pregnant.” He stays under the covers until he hears the front door close and then leans back in bed, exhaling loudly.

Pregnant. _Pregnant_. Laura was pregnant. He could barely be a functional husband with Bobbi, and sure, he had been a little better with this time around with Laura, largely because they fit better together. But he couldn’t even comprehend having a kid. And if Laura, who could handle anything, was saying that she wasn’t ready, then there was no way in hell that _he_ could be ready. Not with his past. And not with his job.

He checks his watch and then calls into the office, lies about a doctor’s appointment that he's forgotten, and promises he’ll be in later that afternoon -- he owes Natasha, after all, and he’s not done working with her.

Then he picks up his phone and dials Bobbi’s number.

 

***

 

Bobbi meets him at a coffee shop on the Lower East Side, across the street from the 2nd Avenue subway station, a place that Clint remembers coming to often for breakfast on their off days. When she walks in the door, he’s so relived to see her that he has to practically stop himself from throwing his body into her arms.

“Seriously, Barton?” She asks as she slides into the booth. Clint grunts.

“Look, I’m feeling terrible enough as it is, and I’m about to drop dead from a panic attack. So if you could cut the sarcastic crap, Morse, that would be fantastic. Okay?”

Bobbi presses her lips together. “Okay,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry. What happened again?”

“Law of physics,” Clint says, throwing his hands up. “Or, I guess more accurately, the laws of the human reproductive system? Whatever. I thought we were taking precautions, apparently we weren’t, she probably hates me and now I’m going to have a kid. I can barely hold it together as it is.”

“She doesn’t hate you,” Bobbi says with a small sigh. “She’s upset and she’s probably scared, and she has every right to be. Pregnancy is something you talk about and plan for well in advance...it’s not something that just happens.”

“Unless you’re me,” Clint says grumpily. “I don’t know what the hell to do. I’d never ask her _not_ to have it. But...I just…”

“You’ll be a great dad,” Bobbi breaks in as if reading his thoughts, and Clint laughs sardonically.

“My own dad was a horror. My own mother wasn’t any better. My own brother, well…” He trails off. “You know the story. You know that I don’t exactly have cherished memories of parenting skills to learn from.”

“I know,” Bobbi says simply. “So you make your own memories, and you learn your own lessons. Besides, Laura grew up with a family, too. And being parents is about _learning_.” She reaches over and takes his hand.

“I guess.” He knows he doesn’t have to remind Bobbi that _family_ never really meant anything to him, not in the way it had to her, not in the way it would to Laura. Bobbi smiles.

“Laura will come around,” she promises. “Give her some time. Let her talk to her friends, call her mom, get her emotions out. In the meantime, you should go to work and take care of yourself. She’s not going to leave you over this.”

“How do you know?” Clint asks, trying to keep the fear out of his voice, because it’s the only thing he’s felt his brain has been able to center on since last night.

“Clint.” She sighs. “You’re married. You’re living together. This isn’t someone that you got pregnant by accident, without knowing them. This is your _wife_.” Bobbi pauses to take a sip of coffee. “She’ll forgive you. I promise.”

“You’re so _sure_ ,” Clint mutters. Bobbi squeezes his hand.

“Of course I’m sure. I know you. And I was married to you, remember? Which means I forgave you for a lot of things.” She kicks Clint’s shin gently under the table. “And so will she.”

 

***

 

Clint finally does make it to work, slightly later than he’s planned and still slightly out of it by his own standards, but he’s pretty sure he can get through the rest of the day. If nothing else, being with Natasha and focusing on her progress should provide him with enough distraction until he had to go home and face Laura again.

“Come the fuck on,” he complains when he opens the door to her holding room after punching in a series of complex sequences, only to find her brandishing a cutting knife in his direction. “Seriously?”

“Oh, it’s just you.” She flips the knife back, catching it deftly by the hilt and hands it over to him innocently.

“Of course it’s just me,” he says as he swipes the weapon from her hand. “Who _else_ would have the amazingly annoying code to your room memorized? And how the hell did you even get this?”

Natasha shrugs, sitting back down on the small bed in the cell. “You can never be too careful. And that I stole during breakfast this morning.” Clint sees her smug smile falter as she continues to stare at him.

“What’s wrong?”

It should be laughable, really, that she could read him like this, considering he’s barely spent two weeks in her presence. Maybe he was more of an open book than he ever realized. Maybe he was letting his guard down too much with Laura. He rolls his shoulders, suddenly too tired to pretend or beat around the bush. It wasn’t worth it, and she already knew about Laura, anyway.

“My wife is pregnant.”

Natasha reacts at that, and in a way Clint doesn’t expect, her fingers curling and her lips becoming thin white slivers, as if what he’s said has hit her in a way that she doesn’t know how to process. “Pregnant?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, grabbing a chair and turning it around so that he can sit backwards, resting his chin. The feeling of cold metal against his skin makes him think of his wedding ring, hidden in a pouch at home. “Having a baby.”

“I know what being pregnant means,” Natasha says sharply. “I’m a prisoner, I’m not stupid.”

“I know,” Clint says, sounding more irritable than he means to, because suddenly, everything about this day just seems to be going wrong. “And by the way, you’re not a prisoner. It was just...it was a surprise, okay?”

“She doesn’t like surprises?” Natasha asks. Clint snorts.

“Not like this.”

“So then you’re not happy.” It’s not phrased as a question but her tone is curious, and for the life of him, he can’t figure out why she’s so invested in his personal life.

“I’m happy, sure, but it’s a big change,” Clint says, getting up before he’s coerced into revealing even more things that he’s not comfortable with sharing. “Sorry if this isn’t a good example of an idealistic American life.”

“That would require you being an idealistic American man,” Natasha says and when Clint narrows his eyes, she starts smiling. “You’re not. At all.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

Natasha looks undeterred. “You’re different. Different than the men who have come to kill me before.” Something about her tone makes Clint sit back down, and he studies her face a little more closely.

“My men?”

Natasha hesitates, and Clint thinks it might be the first time since he’s taken her in that he’s seen her second guess her reactions so visibly. “Maybe,” she says. “They never had your uniforms. But they all wanted the same things. They all wanted to kill me. Except for you.” She pauses. “Why didn’t you want to kill me?”

Clint feels his mouth go dry. “I…” _I was asked to make a different call_ , is what he should say, but he also doesn’t want to make it seem like he only spared her life because he was following orders. That had been true when he left for Stalingrad, but after standing face-to-face with her as she wielded his bow, he knew instinctively he would’ve made the choice anyway.

“I wanted to give you a chance.” He digs his fingers into the chair, and Natasha looked unconvinced.

“Well, you’ve kept your promises so far,” she says slowly. “So I guess I can trust you.”

“Hey, that’s all I’m asking.” He gets up again, running a hand through his hair, and Natasha gives him a tight smile.

 

***

 

Clint stays at work for probably longer than he needs to, until he realizes he’s practically avoiding going home, which makes him feel even guiltier. Laura’s standing by the table when he walks in, and he can tell from the way she’s positioned that she must have only gotten back to the apartment a few minutes before him.

“Hi,” Clint says uncertainly, scuffing a foot across the floor. Laura sighs.

“Hi.”

They lapse into uncomfortable silence, a pause that makes Clint’s stomach churn with anxiety. “Look, I’m not --”

“I’m keeping the baby,” Laura breaks in, folding her arms, and Clint stops mid-sentence, all of his own fears and worries dashed in the wake of her admission.

“Wait. Really -- you thought I was going to ask --”

“I don’t know if that’s what I thought you were going to ask,” Laura says tightly, though the way she’s talking makes it clear to Clint that the fear was more than a little present. “But that’s what I’ve decided.”

Clint bites down on his lip, rubbing his teeth over the chapped skin. “Laura…” He reaches to pull a chair out and sits down. “I would _never_ ask you to do that. We’ve talked about having kids.”

“I know. And like I said, we talked about having kids when we were...not like this,” Laura finishes, looking a little embarrassed. “Not living off Chinese food take out in an apartment in Brooklyn, not trying to scrape by thanks to combined salaries. I don’t need what I had growing up, but I need some stability.”

“So we’ll make it work,” Clint says, leaning back, pushing his own insecurities from his mind. “I promise. We’ll figure out a way. Get a house in the country and I’ll travel or...or, I don’t know.” He stops, searching for the right words to continue and Laura raises an eyebrow.

“The country.”

“Yeah, well. Just spitballing. Hell, maybe you want to go live on a farm again,” he says, waving his hands around. “The point is, I don’t care what my job tells me to do. I’m not letting you do this alone. Okay?”

“You’re sitting the wrong way,” Laura says in response, rubbing a hand over her eye, and it takes Clint a moment to realize what she means. He laughs shortly, swinging the chair around so that he’s sitting backwards instead of forwards.

“See? You’re gonna be a great mom. You already know how to boss me around.”

“So do you,” she points out, and Clint gives her a half-smile.

“Yeah. I guess we both do.”

 

***

 

The day Natasha gets out of her cell and gets transferred to an actual, non-prisoner-like room at SHIELD, Clint comes to visit.

He’s held off for a few days in case she thought he was stalking her, or trying to get more information about her, also hoping that by staying away, he’ll keep unconsciously building a bridge of trust. Her new room is no less guarded -- two SHIELD agents posted outside, another lock code, and minimal amenities, Clint guesses, due to her tendency to make a weapon out of anything that does and doesn’t move. But it’s at least a nicer place overall, and it doesn’t feel so much like a jail cell.

“I’m sorry it’s not more,” he apologizes as he enters, hanging by the door. “You gotta keep building up. It’s kind of slow going with trust in these places.”

“Except for you,” Natasha notes, twirling a strand of hair around her fingers. She’s cut it herself, much to everyone’s dismay, though Clint’s not sure if they really care about the fact that she chopped off her own locks as much as they cared that she had managed to steal a pair of scissors when no one was looking. Her once long hair now lies in a stringy mass around her face, blunt edges and uneven lengths of red strands dripping like blood down her cheeks when she looks down.

“I guess,” Clint says, shrugging. “How are you doing?”

“You ask me that every day, as if something has changed,” says Natasha. “I’m fine. I just want to get out of here.”

Clint nods. “I know. And I swear I am making every attempt to help you with that, okay?”

“Sure,” Natasha says in a voice that sounds bored. “So what do you want today?”

Clint hesitates before he speaks again, re-playing the words he’s already rehearsed in his mind. “I actually was hoping you might want to come over for dinner. At my house.”

Natasha snaps her head up, regarding him with wide, curious eyes. “Your _house_?”

“Yeah,” Clint says, waving his hand around. “Well, my apartment, if we’re being politically correct. You could meet the wife you keep asking about, see what life is like outside of a room...or a covert security organization,” he adds as an afterthought. “If you want.”

Natasha frowns, picking at the covers of the bed she’s sitting on. “Why are you doing this?” She shakes her head. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Yes, I do,” Clint says automatically. “I owe you the life I promised I’d give you, if you came back with me.”

“And that can happen without you inviting me to dinner,” Natasha assesses wisely. “I’m not some buffer for this pregnancy issue, am I?”

“No!” Clint bursts out, horrified. “Jesus, no, I’m a big boy. I can handle my own issues. Mostly. Look, I’m just...trying to be nice.”

Natasha presses her lips together and makes a small noise. “Fine,” she says after a moment, crossing and uncrossing her legs in a way that makes Clint vaguely uncomfortable. “Then yes, I will come to dinner.”

 

***

 

The second part of Clint’s brilliant plan to introduce Natasha to something resembling a normal life is to tell Laura about his proposition. And as he hangs around the bathroom, watching Laura put on make-up, he suddenly realizes it’s probably not the best idea to spring something like this on her so quickly, especially when they were still trying to mend the cracks from her pregnancy surprise.

“You’re thinking,” Laura observes as she applies eye shadow, glancing in the mirror as Clint leans back against the wall.

“I’m always thinking,” he responds, and Laura rolls her eyes, the message behind her reaction as clear as if she’s spoken the words. _Out with it._

“Anyway, so uh...remember when I talked about that person I brought in? From Russia?”

“The assassin.” Laura’s voice is emotionless, and Clint winces. Maybe he did too good a job at convincing Laura there was absolutely no way he would ever be swayed by her.

“Right. Well, uh...she’s not really much of an assassin anymore. I don’t think.”

Laura looks into the mirror, staring at Clint, but doesn’t say anything. He presses his hands together, barreling on before she can open her mouth.

“So, I’m trying to get her to open up and I sort of...invited her over for dinner.”

“What?” Laura asks sharply, turning around, lipstick in hand. “Clint, did you hear yourself just now?”

“Yeah,” he admits, looking at the floor. “I know. I should’ve asked --”

“This has nothing to do with asking,” Laura continues, twisting back around. “Although, yes, you should’ve opened your mouth and asked. The point is, this is a volatile woman who you said hurt multiple men just because she didn’t feel like talking to them. This is someone who you couldn’t get to trust you for weeks. And now you’re inviting her into our home?”

“Aw, come on,” Clint says, picking at a scar on his forearm. “I don’t think she’s that bad anymore. And you told me you trusted me, right? Don’t you also trust I wouldn’t bring someone here if I wasn’t sure about them?”

“Honestly?” Laura crosses her arms. “I _used_ to think that. Now I’m not so sure.”

“Give me a break,” Clint mutters angrily. “She’s coming for dinner, okay? We can have goddamn cheap take-out for all I care, it doesn’t matter. But I owe her at least one good thing, and giving her a glimpse of a normal life is the best I can do. _You_ were the one that told me I should be myself.”

“I didn’t mean invite her over for dinner,” Laura protests, her voice clipped. “I’m having a baby, I have enough stress in my life right now. I don’t need to worry about eating with someone who can potentially kill me.”

“You’re being over-dramatic,” Clint says, throwing up his hands, and Laura frowns into the mirror.

“Am I? Who invites their own _marks_ over for dinner, Clint?”

He doesn’t answer, because he really can’t think of a good response, and Laura makes a face. “Whatever. Tell her to come. You obviously already did, anyway.”

Clint backs out of the bathroom, closing the door behind him, and then makes himself a re-heated dinner while looking at some reports on his phone. When he gets into bed some hours later, later than usual, he’s surprised to find that Laura immediately wraps herself around him, her head nestling into his arm.

“I don’t know what to do with you sometimes,” she says quietly, when he’s sure she’s finally asleep. “You care too much, Clint. You see _too_ much good.” She pauses, sighing quietly. “And I hate that I love that about you.”

Clint smiles halfheartedly in response.

 

***

 

Three weeks later, paperwork handed off and riot act _almost_ read (“ _are you seriously thinking of taking her out of headquarters and inviting her home to your personal property?_ ”), Clint walks into Natasha’s room and finds her sitting on the ground, reading a worn paperback. He’s taken her out every now and again -- a coffee break, cafeteria visits, a sparring session -- those she’s left him bruised and battered after, but he likes it, because she’s the only person he’s met in a long time who can meet his level of energy, and who isn’t afraid to throw a punch at his eye. Laura had given him the once, twice over along with some silent treatment the first time Clint had limped through the door with a bloody nose, but quickly dropped her complaints in the interest of what Clint knows would have been another argument. Both of them knew it wasn’t worth it to be fighting every other day right now.

“ _Lolita_ ’s not exactly the lightest reading,” Clint remarks, catching the title when she closes the book over her finger. Natasha smirks.

“Afraid it’s too racy for me?”

“I’m worried it’s not racy _enough_ ,” he replies with an eyebrow raise. “We’ll get a car from the front, if you’re ready.”

Natasha nods, standing up, awkwardly smoothing down the clothes that Clint has brought over. He had refused to find her anything that resembled a dress or a skirt, because he had a feeling that would make her wholly uncomfortable, which wasn’t what the night was about. But at least the shirt and jeans he’d procured were a little nicer than the dirty sweatshirts she’d been wearing on and off since her arrival.

Clint picks up the phone in her room and calls the operating desk; five minutes later he’s sitting in the back of a SHIELD-issued car with Natasha next to him. It feels vaguely similar to their first trip together, only this time there’s no handcuffs and no lingering exhaustion.

“What is she like?” Natasha asks as the car navigates through Manhattan and towards the Midtown Tunnel. “Your wife.”

“Laura?” Clint turns his gaze from the window, where he’s been staring listlessly at the streets. “She’s nice. Strong-willed, patient. Well, mostly. Doesn’t really let anyone boss her around,” he admits with a small smile.

“And how does she feel about me?”

Clint’s not entirely sure if she’s trying to get information out of him because that’s what she’s been trained to do -- assess a situation to the best of her ability before immersing herself in unfamiliar territory -- or if it’s because she’s actually nervous about meeting someone who isn’t a SHIELD agent or psychologist.

“She doesn’t really know you,” Clint says, which he figures is an honest answer. “She knows what I’ve told her -- which isn’t much, by the way, thanks to your inability to open up. But she’s meeting you with an open mind.”

“I wonder how much of an open mind,” Natasha says a little thoughtfully. Clint snorts.

“Put it this way: she came to live with me under the pretense that I had some job that wasn’t entirely safe or normal,” he says. “She gave me an open mind. She can do the same with you.”

“Maybe,” Natasha muses. “Second chances, right?”

“Yeah,” Clint agrees. “Second chances.” He’s got no doubt that this is the _right_ thing to do, instinct tells him that much, but by the time they pull up to Clint’s apartment, he’s wondering if this is a _good_ thing to do after all. He’s really got no proof Natasha has absolutely reformed except for the fact that she hasn’t tried to kill him yet.

“What’s wrong, Barton?” She asks as she gets out of the car. “Afraid I’m going to hurt you?”

“Not too sure, with your track record,” he bites back, wondering if it’s entirely smart to egg her on. She smiles, though, clearly intrigued with his willingness to push back.

“I promise to be on my best behavior,” she says in a serious tone as Clint opens the front door.

“That’s exactly what I’m worried about,” he admits as they walk up the winding stairs of the building. He sticks his key into the lock and takes a deep breath, his heart beating abnormally fast, then kicks off his shoes as he enters, as good of an indication as any that he’s arrived home without actually announcing himself.

Laura’s sitting at the table, the top of her head just barely visible over the bar counter that separates the kitchen from the living room, and Clint distinctly smells Chinese wafting from two large brown bags in front of her.

“Laura, this is Natasha.”

Clint knows there’s going to be no easy way to do this except awkwardly make introductions like it’s no big deal. As it is, Laura smiles in a way that looks like it hurts, one hand unconsciously going to her stomach as the other reaches out. Natasha looks surprised, but shakes it loosely.

“Hi,” she says in a throaty rasp and Clint doesn’t think he’s ever heard her sound so out of her element. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me,” Laura says, throwing a glance to Clint. “He’s the one that wanted you to come over.”

“Thank you anyway,” Natasha says, her tone perfunctory, like she’s been trained to dutifully comply with certain answers. “I like your kitchen.”

Clint laughs, breaking the tension. “There are much nicer kitchens, I can assure you,” he says, pulling out a chair. “By the way, I figured it would be too much of a pain to cook, especially since I’m not sure what you particularly like aside from cafeteria food. But the take-out here is really quite spectacular. We order in all the time.”

Natasha smiles slightly as she sits down and Laura takes a seat next to Clint, putting her palm in his while he uses his free hand to unload soup and white plastic boxes. It’s annoyingly awkward, but he’s ambidextrous enough to make it work.

“I’ve never been to Russia,” Laura says finally. “But I’d like to go, someday.”

Natasha nods as Clint finishes laying out a spread of food on the table. “It was a nice place to grow up. I think.” She pauses. “Frankly, I don’t have much of a memory outside of where I was before Agent Barton arrived.”

Laura looks over at Clint, who averts his eyes. “I see,” she says quietly, before straightening up a little. “You know, my life wasn’t all that idealistic, either,” she adds after a moment, her voice turning lighter. “My dad was taken away from me when I was little. I never really felt like I could be a child, after that.”

“Why?” Natasha asks, in the middle of taking an egg roll.

“I guess because people thought he was a bad person,” Laura responds as Clint’s insides clench together. “I don’t think he was, though. He just got involved with the wrong people. But it’s easy to believe everyone based on their actions and what they see on paper.” She takes a bit of chicken and swallows. “I never really saw him again after he left. But I like to think that he knew how I felt about him.”

“You believed,” Natasha says quietly.

“I did,” Laura says, spooning shrimp onto her plate. “He was my dad, and I knew the person that he really was. That was worth something to me.”

Clint watches the exchange silently, while his rice gets progressively colder.

 

***

 

“That was nice,” Natasha says while they ride back a few hours later, because Clint’s opted to escort her in her return to headquarters, for both his sake and hers. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he says, pressing his palms together. “I’m glad you...well, I’m glad it was a good night.”

Natasha nods. “What your wife said about...being that person who believes in you?” Clint watches her face change and suddenly feels dizzy.

“Yeah?”

“I felt the same.”

Clint closes his eyes, then opens them again. “Really?”

“Yes. I can’t remember the last time I had an actual meal. Talked about things that weren’t about how I was supposed to kill someone. It’s been awhile,” she says a little sadly, and Clint finds himself reaching for her hand.

“You were right...she’s very nice,” Natasha adds after another moment and Clint starts to laugh, because he can’t help it. He leans his head back.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, she is.”

 

***

 

When Clint gets home three hours later, Laura’s asleep, half of the covers strewn around her middle. Clint takes off his clothes and brushes his teeth, rubbing the stress out of his eyes, and then sits down on the bed next to her, pulling the covers up around her shoulders.

He stops halfway through his task, placing his hand gently on her stomach, letting his fingers linger. Laura stirs but doesn’t open her eyes, and Clint lets his hand stay there as the quiet stretches around them, his mind rolling over thoughts and conversations of the past month and a half. When he finally gets up, he goes to the calendar hanging off the inside of the closet door, and counts nine months from March, circling November with the big red marker hanging from Laura’s hospital lanyard.

Clint smiles.


	5. Chapter 5

**PART FIVE**

_Claim the truth that gets lost_  
_In the miles of memory and open folds_  
_So change these rules and let’s cross_  
_All the sacred boundaries we’ve overgrown_  
_Build a brave new foundry close to home_

* * *

Weeks go by, but Clint doesn’t actually tell anyone that he’s going to be a father.

There’s the anxiety part of it -- the worry about how fast word would actually travel and how he’d, in turn, be looked at by his co-workers. But there’s also the protective part of it -- the fact that he’s chosen to keep Laura (and to an extent, his burgeoning relationship with Natasha) hidden from a majority of people who weren’t in his close circle. He certainly wasn’t about to start opening the floodgates with unexpected baby news.

“Every single place outside of Brooklyn is about as much as ten of my paychecks,” Laura complains as she shuffles through the real estate section of the _Times_ during breakfast. Clint frowns.

“What’s wrong with Brooklyn?” he asks a little sourly, taking a sip of coffee and leaning back against the counter. “I like it here.”

“And I like it here too,” Laura agrees, pushing her glasses up to her head. “But you know I don’t want to stay here for the rest of my life.”

Clint falls silent because he does know, and it’s not like he hasn’t ever known that Laura wasn’t dead set on living in a one-bedroom apartment in Bed Stuy forever. But the thought of moving anywhere else -- certainly someplace bigger, more dwarfing and less familiar -- unsettles him.

“You can keep this place when we move,” she continues, as if reading his mind. “You don’t have to give it up.”

“Even if we move out of New York?”

“Who says we’re moving out of New York?” Laura asks, sounding a little put out. “I have a job, too.”

“Yeah, but you can work anywhere,” Clint points out. “I mean, you could even make house calls.”

“I will not be making house calls, pregnant or otherwise,” Laura says stiffly, closing the paper. “We do need to start thinking seriously about this, though. And also about a name.”

“Ugh.” Clint makes a face as he takes another sip of coffee, fighting the urge to down the whole cup. “Isn’t it...I dunno. Isn’t it a little early for a name?”

Laura gives him a sharp look. “Some people have names picked out before they even get pregnant, you know.”

“Yeah, I know, but…” Clint trails off, swirling his coffee languidly, and Laura offers him a gentle smile.

“No ‘B’ names, right?”

Clint smiles back, surprised and not at the same time that she remembers the conversation from so long ago, feeling his anxiety start to level out.

“No ‘B’ names,” he agrees, and Laura looks overly thoughtful.

“What about names beginning with ‘C’, then?”

Clint shrugs, reaching for a banana from the fruit bowl. “Don’t make ‘em high-class sounding like Clinton or Charles and it might work.”

“For your information, I was thinking Cooper,” she informs him with a patented eye roll, and Clint furrows his brow.

“Cooper?”

Laura suddenly looks uncomfortable for the kind of conversation they’re having. “It was the name my dad used as one of his undercover aliases,” she says after a beat. “I found it in a file somewhere when I was searching the house. I don’t know if it’s too high class, really, but I just thought --”

“Hey,” Clint says, moving closer so that he’s right next to her. He pulls her against his stomach and rubs her back. “Cooper’s a good name. I like it.”

“Yeah?” Laura sounds surprised, and Clint laughs.

“Yeah. I mean, I don’t know what will happen if we have end up having a girl, but god knows we’re not naming this kid after anyone in my own family. And besides, whatever we pick should have meaning, right?”

Laura nods against him, turning her head upwards. “Thank you,” she says after a minute and Clint kisses the top of her head.

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

***

 

In the time it’s taken for Laura to grow marginally bigger in size and for Clint to figure out exactly how much it’s going to cost to buy everything that they need to actually have a child, Natasha has been moved off of probation and out of her semi-prison room, into something resembling real quarters.

“Whatever stunt you pulled at dinner apparently worked,” Hill had told him curtly when he arrived at her desk a few weeks ago, handing him a folder before going on to mention something about how Natasha had mysteriously become compliant and that maybe, instead of turning her free, they should start to consider how she could be useful in a SHIELD setting. “Don’t do it again.”

“Yes, m’am.” It was the only good thing to come out of that day, as his next drop of information was Bobbi’s official confirmation that her transfer had been approved and she was leaving for L.A. by the end of the month.

“Don’t look so down,” Bobbi chides as she exits an office, walking ahead and not bothering to see if he’ll keep up. “It’s not like we’re married anymore. And it’s not like we won’t get to talk from time to time.”

“Not the point,” Clint protests, hurrying along the corridor. “Who the hell am I gonna whine to when something happens with Laura?”

“Are you _expecting_ something to go wrong? Besides, you seem to be getting on pretty well with Natasha,” Bobbi observes with a small smile. Clint groans.

“Yeah, we’re on a good level and all that, but I don’t exactly feel comfortable telling her I had sex last night.”

“I’m glad you feel the need to tell _me_ those details,” Bobbi responds dryly and Clint rubs his eyes.

“Seriously, Morse. This isn’t fair.”

“Seriously, Barton.” Bobbi’s voice takes on an annoyed tone, and she fixes him with a scathing look. “I don’t know how you managed it, but you’ve got a pretty nice life right now. Start appreciating it instead of worrying about everything that’s going to change.”

“I like worrying,” Clint grumbles as Bobbi reaches out, wrapping her fingers around his arm.

 

***

 

Clint and Laura’s next fight comes unexpectedly, when Clint’s late to one of the birthing classes at the hospital. He gets stuck in a meeting, and then stuck in crosstown traffic, and by the time he actually gets over to the East Side, sweating and cursing internally and disheveled, the class itself is half over. Laura doesn’t speak to him for hours afterwards and claims she’s fine when they get home, but Clint isn’t stupid, and he knows what this is -- it’s another notch in the argument of his job coming before his personal life. What’s worse, Natasha seems to know it too.

“You’ve gotta figure out your priorities,” she says over lunch one day in the cafeteria. Clint picks up a limp piece of bread and glowers.

“You know a lot about my priorities for someone who just met me,” he points out and Natasha shrugs.

“You’re right. I totally don’t know anything about you at all. You just tell me about your personal problems, invite me over for dinner, and make an effort to hang out with me when you don’t have to.” Clint’s about to refute her words with another sarcastic comment when he realizes with an annoying start that she’s right.

“Fine,” he responds, picking at his salad. “In case you couldn’t tell, I’m kind of backed into a corner. I can’t quit my job, and I don’t want to. But it doesn’t mean I’m not putting my wife first.”

“No one said you weren’t,” Natasha says placidly. “I just said that you need to figure out your priorities. You can work and still make sure you’re not ignoring important things, you know.”

“Thank you, Captain Obvious,” Clint says sarcastically and Natasha rolls her eyes.

“You know, keep this up and I’ll start to reconsider that offer you made me about becoming your partner one day.”

“So what, you’d be my therapist instead?” Clint asks icily. “You’re already terrible at it.”

“I know,” Natasha answers with a small smile that, despite the tone of their conversation, Clint swears might be halfway genuine. “As someone at this table recently told me, I’m a work in progress.”

 

***

 

May is when everything goes wrong.

For once, it’s nothing concerning him. But it _is_ the guy he’s worked with on multiple occasions, who ends up in the hospital along with his girlfriend when a mark gone wrong manages to find out where he lives, following him home and attacking him in his Queens apartment. Clint tries to hold off on telling Laura, because he knows the information isn’t going to sit well with her given their current situation, but it’s all over the evening news which makes the topic of conversation practically unavoidable.

“Clint,” she says a week or so later while they’re grocery shopping at Food Emporium, and there’s something about her tone that makes him think she’s not going to ask him what kind of cereal he wants.

“Yeah.”

“I think we should consider moving out of New York.”

Clint blinks, focusing on the roll of paper towels lining the shelves in front of him. “You said we didn’t have to move out of New York,” he says slowly and Laura shrugs, pushing the cart forward while Clint trails behind. “Is this because of what happened to that guy?”

Laura hesitates, just enough for Clint to know with a sinking feeling that it _is_ , no matter what she chooses to use as her response. “I don’t want my kid on SHIELD’s radar,” she responds finally, turning around. “I have that right, Clint. I have that right to want to protect my child.”

“So what?” asks Clint a little harshly, panic setting in because he knows that she’s right. “You propose that we just disappear?”

“I didn’t say that,” Laura responds just as harshly, keeping her voice low.

“Well, that’s what it _sounds_ like you said.”

“No, Clint. What I’m saying is, I don’t know if the city is the best place for us.” She’s staring at him like he’s missing what she’s holding up in front of his eyes with a big neon sign. “To be a SHIELD agent with a registered address in a busy city prone to attacks, like New York…”

“Fine. Then what do you propose _I_ do?” Clint asks, following her into the fruit aisle. “You move with our kid to the middle of nowhere to be safe, and I stay here and work, and we live separate lives?”

Laura swallows. “Maybe,” she says quietly, looking down at the half-filled cart, and Clint feels his mouth go dry.

“You can’t be serious.”

“What other choice do we have?” Laura sounds more miserable than she looks. “You don’t want to stop working but you can’t exactly work remotely, either. I don’t want you to give up your job, but I also don’t think New York is the best place for us to raise a family.”

“So I’ll get a job in a goddamn field office,” he says, digging his nails into his palm. “They’re all over the place.” Laura sighs.

“Clint, listen to yourself. It’s not...it wouldn’t be a separation. We’ll still be married.” She moves closer, so that she can drop her voice even further, and Clint can’t help but think how ridiculous it is that they’re having this conversation in the middle of a _grocery store_ , of all places. “We’ll still be together and I won’t ever stop loving you. It’ll be the same as when you go away for days at a time, just...a lot longer in between when you have to make visits.” She swallows. “It’s not a problem. It’s a solution.”

“It’s a shitty solution,” Clint decides as Laura shakes her head and picks up a carton of grapes.

“Please think about it, okay? For me?”

He can’t think of anything else to respond with and so he nods and follows her as she continues to shop in silence.

 

***

 

“She wants to move away and she wants us to live apart,” Clint says when he walks into the gym for a training session he’s promised he’d have with Natasha, her once-a-week allowance of letting off steam like a normal person. Natasha looks up from the floor, raising her eyebrows at his entrance, grown-out red curls falling into her face.

“I thought I was a terrible therapist,” she remarks as he sits down next to her, stretching his legs.

“I’m not asking for advice. I’m complaining.”

“Oh.” Natasha blinks. “Okay. Then by all means, continue complaining.”

Clint finds that he can’t, because he realizes that even with her permission, it’s not fair to use Natasha as an outlet just because Bobbi isn’t readily available to whine to. It’s not _her_ fault that he’s in this situation. Natasha regards him carefully and he avoids her eyes.

“Are you worried that she’ll stop loving you?” Natasha asks suddenly, and Clint balks, looking up.

“Jesus, dramatic much?”

“Just asking,” Natasha says, going back to her stretches. “That’s why it seems like you’re worried about being apart.”

“I’m worried about being apart because she’s my wife and I love her,” he snaps back. “And because I’m going to have a child that I won’t be able to come home to every night. Not the best way for someone to grow up if they’re looking for a father figure.”

“Well, the way I see it, she’s making this choice so that you _do_ have a child to come home to,” Natasha says resolutely. “Isn’t this kind of thing what you people do when you’re not shooting arrows?”

“Not everyone shoots arrows,” Clint says, avoiding the question he knows she wants an answer to. “And I don’t like it.”

“We all do things we don’t like,” Natasha says in exasperation. “For example, I didn’t like that you made me come here, even though you promised me a bunch of nice things in return.”

“And look at you now,” Clint says caustically. “I mean, you haven’t killed anyone yet.”

“That you know of,” Natasha replies with a small smile that, if he hadn’t become so used to her reactions, he wouldn’t hesitate to wonder about. “So what’s the big deal? You work, and when you’re not working, you’re home. You don’t work _all_ the time.”

“Yeah, but I’m still away.” He rolls over onto his back. “I’m not there when there’s a problem. I’m not there when my kid needs a bottle. I’m not --”

“You are a hero and that’s what your kid will remember when you come home,” Natasha says curtly, in a voice that throws Clint out of his thoughts. “You will walk in the door and every single time, someone will think you did something to save the world. How is that not enough for you?”

Clint searches his brain, and finds that he doesn’t really have an answer. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But I told you. It’s not really about that. It’s about not being there.”

“You know, I never saw my family again after I was taken away,” Natasha says, standing up, and it takes Clint a moment to realize that she’s just given away something about her life willingly. “So I’d consider yourself lucky you even have that choice to make.”

Clint gets to his feet and lets her words ruminate in his mind as they start to spar.

 

***

 

When he gets home later that evening, he’s surprised to find Laura sitting outside on the fire escape, three large bags of baby items littering the living room, boxes half opened in an abandoned attempt at organization. His first instinct is to be angry, because the thing is stupidly rusty, and also because she’s not exactly two months pregnant anymore. When he climbs out himself, however, snagging the frayed part of his jeans on one of the rusty nails, he can clearly see the tear tracks on her cheeks and decides against starting an argument.

“Sorry,” Laura apologizes softly, shivering in the wind that twirls around the building, like that of a coiled snake. “I just...I needed to get out of the apartment and I didn’t know where to go.”

“Okay,” Clint says slowly, situating himself next to her, until he’s comfortable enough that he can grab her shoulders and pull her back. He knows about hormones, and while she’s been unpredictable where those were concerned, she had managed to keep a lid on most of her emotions. The fact that she’s suddenly allowing herself to be so vulnerable is making him more anxious than he wants to admit.

“I keep having these dreams,” she says after a moment, placing her chin on her knee. “What kind of a mother I’ll be, if I can keep my kid safe...if I can really do this on my own.” Clint feels the pit in his stomach start to grow.

“You won’t be alone,” he promises, fighting off the worry he can feel spreading through his brain. “Ever.” When Laura doesn’t respond, he takes another breath and closes his eyes, going over the words before he says them out loud.

“We’ll start looking for a place out of the city,” he allows, rubbing her stomach gently. “Hell, maybe we’ll even find someplace that’s close to where you grew up.” Clint stares out over the fire escape, at the buildings whose windows are awash in light, the skyline of Manhattan spread out in the distance like the promise of a dream too big to capture. “I don’t like it, but you’re right.”

“I don’t like it either,” Laura admits quietly, her voice shaky again. Clint kisses her cheek, forcing himself to sound more optimistic than he feels.

“Hey, look. It’s gonna be okay. And we’ll work it out. I mean, look at what we’ve survived so far. If we can handle a surprise kid, we can totally deal with being apart for a bit, right?”

Laura nods, wrapping her arms around him, and Clint recognizes the grip -- stronger than usual, a reminder that she needs for herself, a reminder that she has something tangible to hold onto.

“We can deal with being apart,” he repeats, putting his head on her shoulder and listening to her breathing as the sun sinks behind the clouds.

 

***

 

Surprisingly, it’s Nick Fury of all people that fixes the problem.

“Romanoff told me about your situation,” he says and before Clint can open his mouth, he barrels on. “Because apparently, you can’t be bothered to ask for help. You can only complain about things.”

“Goddammit,” Clint mutters, before raising his voice. “Look, I didn’t want to put all of this out there, alright? Can’t I be afforded some fucking measure of privacy in this place?”

“Barton, I don’t really care that you’re having a kid.” Fury looks frustrated. “You’re a human being who is allowed to procreate, so long as it doesn’t interfere with your work, which, if I know anything about you, it won’t. Congratulations, by the way, and I hope whatever you have is better at following orders than you are.”

“Thanks,” Clint says with a smile that doesn’t get returned.

“As for the other problem keeping you up at night, I’ve got a place in Indiana. An old farmhouse that used to be a safe house, back in the day. It’s never been on the grid.” Fury hands Clint a folder. “If you like it okay, you and Laura can live there with your family, and I’ll personally make sure it never gets on SHIELD’s radar.”

“And…”

“And anyone else’s radar, for that matter,” Fury finishes, spreading his fingers on the table. “As far as you and I are concerned, you’re a single bachelor who, despite what everyone else tells me, is definitely _not_ hitting on your potentially-soon-to-be-partner.”

“Great,” Clint says, opening the folder. There’s a list of amenities and rundown of the house as it stands, much like Clint imagines a real estate listing would offer, and he bypasses the typed pages in favor of the multiple glossy photos clipped to the side of the file. The house seems fine, all things considered -- a sprawling grey-colored establishment with a big porch and sloping roof and two floors. It also, to Clint’s eyes, looks far too big for one person, which makes him feel even guiltier about the whole thing.

“You and Laura can make a trip to check it out,” Fury says as Clint lets his eyes travel over the photos. “And if it’s good, we’ll figure out the rest.”

Clint nods, and he wants to laugh, because while part of him can’t believe that he’s actually going to go through with what still seems like a terrible decision, the other part of him is grateful that he doesn’t have to deal with it hanging over his head anymore. Laura would like the place, he knows, he has a sense of what she prefers from watching her house hunt. Whether she would like being this far away and this isolated was another story entirely.

“Thanks,” he says finally, closing the file and standing up. Fury waves a hand.

“Don’t thank me. Thank Romanoff. By the way, don’t forget that you have a meeting at noon.”

“Right. My standard disciplinary hearing. How could I forget?” Clint asks sarcastically, before striding out of the office, clutching the packet in his right arm.

 

***

 

It’s easiest for Laura to travel before her third trimester fully hits, so Clint blocks off some time with Fury’s permission and books a commercial flight to Indiana. They both veto the idea of taking a quinjet almost immediately, the trip is something that needs to feel normal and Clint knows that Laura won’t feel settled if she’s being taken everywhere under SHIELD’s wing.

“It reminds me of home,” Laura says after they secure a rental car at the airport. Clint eases onto the highway, gunning the engine and giving her a sideways glance.

“Is that a good thing?”

“I guess,” Laura says hesitantly, in a way that makes Clint think she might not be really sure about her words. He reaches across the seat with his free hand, grabbing her fingers.

The house is farther out than Clint’s anticipated, though not so far out that it’s entirely secluded -- the road is otherwise quiet but there’s a small town within walking distance, as well as a bus stop a few miles away. A dilapidated fence with a crooked gate that looks like it’s seen better days winds its way along the front of the property like a protective barrier; there’s a lone tire swinging from one of the bigger trees in the yard, a big red barn positioned diagonally to the house, and a worn out tractor sitting in the large field. Clint gets out of the car and shields his eyes against the sun.

“Well, it is remote,” he says before turning around and looking at Laura, who is studying the house with her hands on her hips.

“It’s big,” she says when she finally meets his eyes, and he sighs loudly.

“Come on,” he says, putting his arm around her shoulders and leading her up the pathway. “We’ll check it out.”

Upon opening the door, Clint’s surprised to find that the house is fully furnished -- a perk that he knows comes with any safe house, so long as the safe house isn’t somewhere where it’s used for short-term stays. But the amount of furniture and the extent to which the place is decorated is more elaborate than he’s expected. There are framed paintings on the walls, sets of dishes in the cabinets above the sink, blankets in each of the bedrooms and books on the shelves lining the living room. Everything could use a little work, he realizes, as they walk through the house -- the stairs are creaky and the paint is chipping and there are loose floorboards in various spots. Still, Clint can’t get over the fact that the house looks more like someone spent a lot of time actually living here, rather than crashing when it was convenient.

“Are you sure no one’s been keeping this place up?” Laura asks as she opens a cabinet and takes out a porcelain plate. Clint shrugs, yanking at the fridge door.

“That’s what I was told,” he says, sticking his head inside, his eyes meeting a couple cans of beer and a carton of milk but otherwise, not much else. Clint grabs a Coors Light and pops the top while Laura gives him a look.

“What?” Clint asks innocently, taking a sip. “I’m not making you feel bad...you hate beer.”

Laura ignores his comment as she walks away, climbing the stairs, and Clint follows more slowly, attempting to imagine what it would be like to come home to a place like this every day. It reminds him of Iowa, if his parents had lived in a place nicer and more comforting than where he grew up.

“Master bedroom,” Laura says, opening one of the doors to reveal a room with a queen bed, walk-in closet and a window. Clint steps inside and stands at the glass, which overlooks the front of the property and the barn.

“There are more rooms,” she continues. “You know, in case…”

“In case we have imaginary guests at our secret hiding place?” Clint asks with a raised eyebrow, letting his gaze fall away from the window. Laura sighs.

“I was going to say in case we ever have more kids,” she says and Clint shakes his head almost immediately.

“Jesus, let me deal with one first,” he mutters, though he hasn’t missed the hurt look sliding over her face. It’s what propels him down the stairs and out of the door, where he sits himself down on the porch step.

“Clint.”

It takes her awhile to follow, Clint supposes, because walking up and down a flight of stairs isn’t entirely easy when you’re pregnant. She angles herself downwards until she’s sitting next to him. “Can you please pull your head out of your ass for one moment and think about what we’re doing here?”

“I know what we’re doing here,” he says sourly. “We’re talking about where to live so we can live apart, _that’s_ what we’re doing here.”

“And did you ever think that this is just as hard for me as it is for you?” Laura fixes her gaze on the sky while Clint sucks in a breath of cool air. “ _I’m_ the one who’s going to be living alone. Working alone. You have everyone back in New York, you have your apartment and your boss...you even have that Romanoff girl.”

She’s right, Clint realizes, as she usually is, and the reality of her words slam into him as if someone has taken a fist to his stomach, a punch that forces all the air out of his body. He lowers his head, wrapping his fingers around the back of his neck.

“I know I’ve been selfish,” he admits quietly after a long silence. “But I’m already coming into this worried that I’m not going to be a good father.” He raises his head. “How the hell am I going to be a better father when I’m not even around?”

“You keep saying that,” Laura says, in a voice that sounds like it wants to turn into a scream. “And I keep wondering what you mean by it.” When he looks at her in confusion, she rolls her eyes.

“First of all, Skype. How do you think we managed a long distance relationship before I moved out to you? Modern technologies of the world work wonders.”

“Okay, but --”

“Second of all,” she continues, without giving him a chance to talk, “you’re not exactly _unable_ to spend time with me when you’re not working. There’s nothing stopping you from coming out here when you don’t need to be in New York. And like anything, we’ll figure out a routine.”

“But my kid --”

“He’ll know you,” Laura interrupts firmly. “I’ll make sure of it.” She twists her hands together and Clint sits up straighter, his brow creasing as he takes in her words.

“You said ‘he’.”

Laura startles, as if she hasn’t realized what’s come out of her mouth, and then looks over at him. “Yeah,” she says softly and Clint doesn’t even have to confirm the next question before he asks it.

“When?”

“I found out a few days ago,” she says, putting a hand on his knee. “But I was waiting until we got out here to tell you...I thought it would be better to share it when we were alone.”

Clint nods, swallowing down the lump that’s formed in his throat. “So it’s a boy?”

“Yeah,” Laura says, and her lips can’t seem to stop spreading upwards. “It is.”

Clint can’t help it -- he laughs, feeling his lungs burst with the release of pressure, and falls back against the porch stairs, suddenly feeling lighter than he has in a long time. He entwines his fingers in Laura’s own, staring up at the sky that seems to stretch endlessly beyond his gaze.

“Welcome to the farm, Cooper.”

 

***

 

They try out the diner down the road -- it’s not that expensive but it’s also not as good as New York and they both know it, even if they don’t admit it. Laura buys a few slices of cherry pie and they take it back with them, choosing to sit at the table and eat out of the box with plastic utensils in the dark.

“We can turn on a light, you know,” Clint says as he shoves a piece of pie in his mouth. Laura hums to herself.

“I like the dark, for now. It’s different.”

It _is_ different, Clint notices, it’s eerie and quiet with too much space to move and no city sounds to distract him, even though he’s become so immune to the sirens and honking horns and garbage trucks that he doesn’t even notice them anymore. There’s a difference in smell, also, something urban and more contemporary that seems to constantly remind him that he’s farther away from where he’s always felt the most at home.

They spend the night wrapped around each other in the big bed, but neither of them can sleep well given the strangeness of the whole situation and so they end up making love instead. It’s a slow process with Laura being pregnant, and not as intimate as they’re used to, but Clint thinks that at least being close physically helps with both the tiredness and also their comfort levels -- especially when they do finally find rest afterwards.

“I’m going into town,” Laura says the next morning while Clint scrounges in his luggage for packages of instant coffee. “Picking up a few things for us.”

“Don’t get lost,” Clint jokes as she sighs quietly, heading out the door. Ten minutes after he’s located the elusive Starbucks packets and fifteen minutes after he’s opened his computer and checked his email, he sits down on the worn couch and calls a number he’s recently programmed into his phone.

“Hello?” Natasha’s voice is hesitant and sounds strangely small over the line. Clint smiles.

“I feel like I’m making a prison call.”

She snorts. “I take it your vacation is going well.”

“It’s not really a vacation. But the house is nice,” says Clint, glancing up. “I just thought I’d check in and see how you’re doing.”

“I’m fine. But I’m still not allowed to do much,” says Natasha a little grumpily. “Your boss -- that guy in black -- he just keeps telling me to keep _waiting_.”

“Yeah. It sucks, but that’s protocol,” Clint says a little apologetically. “SHIELD’s red tape and everything. I have some paperwork to deal with when I get back, and then we can talk about going on some assignments together.” He pauses for dramatic effect, mostly because he knows he can. “Provided you don’t kill me first.”

“If I wanted to do _that_ , I would’ve done it months ago,” Natasha says, sounding bored. “Working out isn’t nearly as much fun if you’re not letting me beat you up, by the way.”

Clint smiles. “I’m terribly sorry that I’m boring you while I try to work out my personal life,” he retorts. “But I’ll see you in a few days.”

“Good,” Natasha says firmly. “Have fun, then.” She hangs up before Clint can respond and he throws the phone onto the cushion, letting it land in between the curves of the pillow. He thinks about stretching out and taking a nap but as he lies down and stares at the ceiling, he feels his skin start to prickle with discomfort, a growing unease he’s not used to, the notion of being _too_ lethargic. Clint lets his eyes wander, focusing on the spidery cracks that he can see crawling along the walls, before they move to the peeling paint near the arch by the kitchen. He gets up before he can stop himself.

There’s a supply closet he’d managed to find the other day while they were exploring and there’s not much in there except for a few spare tools. But he unearths more useful items when he wanders out to the barn, particularly a full toolbox that’s slightly rusty, but otherwise in good condition.

Clint gathers the metal carton in his arms and brings it back inside, staring at the walls in the living room before kneeling down and getting to work on the floor, unscrewing and re-screwing old floorboards, sanding down splintering wood. He’s so lost in thought that he practically misses Laura walking through the door.

“So this is how you pass the time when you’re not shooting arrows,” Laura says with a smirk as she puts down two full bags of groceries. Clint looks up a little guiltily and meets her eyes.

“I got distracted,” he says, motioning to the tools. “I can’t help it.”

“I know you can’t,” Laura says, looking a little amused. “You always need a project, don’t you?”

Clint sits back on his heels and rubs his hand over his forehead. “I guess,” he says quietly. Laura sighs and holds out a hand.

“You know that’s why I love you, right? And why our _kid_ will love you?”

He nods, letting Laura pull him up, wincing against the pain in his knees, the aches and bruises from missions past that have never really gone away and, Clint knows, likely never will.

“Come on, Hawkeye.” She kisses his cheek, steering him towards the kitchen. “I know you really want to try out this new coffee maker. And then once you can think properly, I’ll make you a real breakfast.”

 

***

 

It takes another day of staying at the farm for Clint to realize that, like it or not, they’ve settled into somewhat of a routine.

Sleeping doesn’t get much easier, but Clint accepts that it might not -- for all that he’s used to falling asleep in random cities and unfamiliar hotel rooms, something about the farm feels different enough that it’s making him think twice about his comfort levels. Laura wakes up and makes breakfast and sits outside on the deck, after Clint has had his own coffee he finds himself continuing work on the house. There’s another project he comes across as soon as he finishes replacing a few floorboards, and there’s almost _too_ much home improvement to keep him busy, so much so that Laura takes to doing things like reading baby books outside or researching specific pregnancy information online just to be close to him.

“Four days are almost up,” he says as they stand in the kitchen, trying to decide what to make for dinner, Clint eyeing Laura’s growing stomach. They had long ago decided that no matter where they ended up living, Laura would give birth in New York, for his comfort and her own.

“I know,” Laura says, glancing at the walls, and Clint watches her face for a long time before he speaks.

“You want this,” he says and Laura sinks down into the kitchen chair, leaning back as much as she can.

“It’s a nice home,” she says quietly. “And I feel like we’ve _made_ it a home.”

“I guess,” Clint responds, joining her and swinging his chair around so that he can sit more comfortably. “It’s only been three days.”

“I didn’t mean the fact that we’ve been living here for a certain amount of time,” Laura says, squeezing his palm. “I meant that it feels settled. Don’t you feel that?” Clint breathes out slowly and Laura squeezes his hand again, a gentle encouragement.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s far,” he says, closing his eyes. “And it still feels different.”

“So we’ll make it feel like ours,” says Laura while rubbing her fingers over his skin, a reassuring bridge of trust. “Isn’t that what we’ve always done? What we’re already doing?”

It is, Clint realizes as he opens his eyes, it’s what they’ve always done and what he’s always done. He had made Laura’s Manchester home his own, once upon a time. She had made his Brooklyn apartment her own, and together they had made various parts of New York their home. The fact that thought they couldn’t do that anywhere else, however far away, was a laughable thought.

“Your mom will tear this place apart,” he says with a small smile. Laura grins back.

“Not when she sees how much you’ve done with it, if you keep this up. But you may be forced to listen to her talk about how she fixed up our _own_ farm back in the day, all by herself.”

“Advice from Gail Hanson about my personal life? I think I’ll take my chances,” Clint responds, earning his shin a sharp kick under the table.

“Jerk.”

“It’s a nice house,” Clint says again and Laura sighs with the sound of something nostalgic, something that, for the first time, makes Clint feel like this might be somewhere he can belong.

“I know.”

 

***

 

The next morning, they load their bags in the car, and while Laura finishes going through the rooms Clint lets himself wander the property, bare feet slapping into wet grass and coarse dirt from last evening’s rain.

“Flight’s on time,” Laura says when she finds him standing by the barn, slipping her phone into her pocket. “If you want to get a head start on the road.”

“Yeah,” Clint says. “Do you think I could have, like, ten minutes?”

Laura knits her brows together, but then shrugs and nods. “I don’t see why not,” she allows, shielding her eyes from the sun as she follows his gaze. “Why?”

Clint pulls open the door to the barn in response, waving his hand behind him as an invitation to follow. There’s sunlight streaming through the cracks of the wood in the ceiling and also from a window higher up near the loft, but other than that, the space is dark and damp, not so much uninviting as it is depressing.

“Clint?”

He crosses the dusty floor and walks over to where he’d found the toolbox, past the tractor that looks too broken down to move, leaning over until he can fully grasp the target stand he’d seen stashed there. Hauling it up, he drags it across the floor so that it’s out of the way of other items littering the space.

“Haven’t seen one of these since the circus,” he admits. “If you believe those stories.”

Laura gives him a sidelong glance. “Out of everything you’ve ever lied to me about, I think being in the circus would actually be the _most_ believable.”

Clint can’t help the laugh that escapes his lips. “I guess that’s fair,” he says, looking down at the bag he’s been carrying, the collapsible bow and set of regular tipped arrows hidden inside. “Do you mind?”

Laura shakes her head. “Of course not,” she says, moving to his right side. Clint reaches down, shaking out his bow until it snaps together and then strings an arrow easily. As he raises his shoulder, he realizes he can’t remember the last time he had shot for fun, without the practice being attached to something more serious, and even though he’d been in and out of the field since meeting Natasha, there hadn’t been ample opportunity to do much shooting.

He exhales quietly, feeling the familiar pull of the bowstring and the slight tingle of pain in his arm, where his dislocated shoulder still burns from time to time.

 _Steady aim. Trust the target. That’s why you never miss._ He closes his eyes and lets the arrow fly, a feeling of relief spreading through his bones, and then unleashes another, switching hands almost effortlessly.

“How’s that?”

Laura walks forward, approaching the target stand, and smiles at the two arrows hanging from the center, sharing the middle of the inner yellow circle. She turns around, meeting his eyes, her expression reflecting what he knows she can’t say in words.

“Perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole story is obviously meant to be AoU compliant in establishing Clint and Laura's relationship, but in the movie, Clint tells the other Avengers, "Fury helped me set this up when I joined" in regards to the farm. I realized pretty early on that with Clint meeting Laura while he was in SHIELD, that line would become irrelevant, hence the slight retcon of them acquiring the farm through different means in this chapter.


	6. Chapter 6

**PART SIX**

_Well we all write our own endings_  
_And we all have our own scars_  
_But tonight I think I see what it's all about_

* * *

 

Cooper’s born when Clint is putting an arrow into someone’s throat and because of that, he misses the initial emergency call that comes through over his comm.

He takes an overnight jet and pops two Xanax’s on the way over, and arrives at the hospital with bloodshot eyes and a stomach that feels like it’s on fire. The orderly is hesitant to let him in the room and he doesn’t blame her, he knows that he looks like the epitome of a crazy person who just walked in off the street, hair sticking straight up and rumpled clothes and a manic look.

“I swear to god, I’m Clint Barton. Laura Barton’s husband,” he tells the woman at the front desk, slamming his hand on the table and feeling himself start to shake. “I work for SHIELD and I can call my boss if you let me, my wife is inside, I just need --”

“ _Clint_ ,” comes a sharp voice from the hallway and he looks up, squinting into the distance because he’s pretty sure now that he’s hallucinating, because there is no way that she can be here. Except she is, and it only serves to make him feel more like crap that his fucking _partner_ could be here for his wife, but he had to be late. As usual.

“Jesus, you look like shit,” Natasha says as she meets him, giving the woman at the desk a curt nod and flashing her visitor pass. “How long was your flight?”

“Uh...thirteen? Fourteen hours,” Clint mutters as she steers him towards the double doors. “Jesus, did I --”

“Yeah, they did a C-section,” Natasha says a little apologetically, gripping his arm. “But it was only an hour ago.” She eyes him as they continue to walk. “I should really clean you up --”

“No,” Clint interrupts. “I’m already late enough. I wanna see my kid, Nat.”

“I know,” Natasha continues gently, guiding him in a straight line down the long corridor. “Calm down, Clint.”

Clint knows Natasha. Clint knows what Natasha means when she says things, what the inflection of her voice means, when it means she wants to be condescending, when it means _shut the fuck up_ , when it means _just trust me_. He holds onto her tone the same way he’s holding onto her arm and swallows down a mixture of anticipation and dread as they approach a small room, and when he pushes open the door he thinks he might actually fall over, if Natasha hadn't been maintaining a decent grip on him.

“I told them they weren’t allowed to take him until you came,” Laura says as he breaks away and takes two strides to the bed, leaning in and putting his hand across the baby’s head. He lets his other hand run across the soft strands of hair as two tiny lips squeeze themselves into a yawn, and then a wailing yell.

It’s a sound Clint thinks he could hear for the rest of his life and be happy with.

“Thanks,” he says hoarsely and though his gaze hasn’t left Laura’s face, he feels Natasha squeeze his hand.

“Anytime.”

 

***

 

On one of Clint's first visits to the farm after Laura officially moves out of New York, he brings a large bag of supplies and a few other items that he’s managed to fit into his suitcase.

“I can’t believe you brought bagels,” Laura says as she takes out two large packages, and Clint crosses his arms.

“Come on. You really thought I was going to leave you somewhere with shitty Midwestern coffee and bad breakfast food?”

“Midwestern coffee is not shitty,” Laura responds but Clint notices she doesn’t refute his gift of two packages from Starbucks, taking them to the table. “What’s that?”

Clint grins and reaches down to grab the wrapped package that’s sticking out of his carry-on bag. “Was wondering when you’d notice. It’s for you. Well, for us. And also, for the house.”

Laura gives him a wary look as she takes the package from his hand, removing the blue tissue paper to reveal a medium-sized dartboard. She looks up in surprise.

“Clint, is this --”

“From the apartment, yeah,” he says, waving his hands around. “Sorry for the shitty wrapping, but I was trying to do it quickly before I left and I couldn’t find the box.”

Laura looks down, tracing her hands over dozens of small holes, most of them collected near the center of the board. “My gift to you on our first anniversary.”

“Because you wanted to make sure I had somewhere to shoot when I couldn’t get to the range,” he adds, putting his arm around her. “Even if it wasn’t arrows. I thought it might find a place here. A little bit of New York...and, well, me.”

Laura clutches the dartboard tighter, her fingers digging into the sides, and Clint notices she’s attempting to hold back tears. When she looks up again, shaking her hair back, her eyes are mostly clear but there’s a definite thin film evening out across her pupils.

“If this is some subtle way to make sure our child learns your own skills, I’m going to kill you.”

“I swear I will not let my child throw a sharp object before they can walk,” Clint says solemnly, taking the board from her. “I _will_ help you put it up, though.”

“No,” Laura says, shaking her head. “I just got him to fall asleep, and I haven’t even gone to bed yet. Besides, you’re going to be here for a few days.”

“Yeah, but this is important,” Clint insists, walking to the closet and taking a hammer out of the toolbox. Laura sighs.

“If Cooper wakes up, this is all your fault.”

“And that’s why I’m here now,” he says, staring at the stretch of kitchen wall, sticking his tongue in his cheek while surveying the mostly empty space. “So I can take care of it and then you can sleep when that happens.”

“You owe me,” Laura says as he begins to bang against the wall, but she’s smiling, and Clint smiles back.

 

***

 

Laura sends texts and photos, but it’s the letters that Clint likes best.

She spends a lot of time (Clint assumes) writing long, rambling diatribes about how things are at the farm, but Clint bypasses most of those stories in favor of the later, more important parts: favorite foods and nighttime rituals, choice lullaby songs and first smiles and any kind of milestone, no matter how small or how seemingly insignificant.

In between traveling back and forth to the farm when he's not being sent all over the world, Clint starts to go on short missions with Natasha, who has been more or less officially inducted into the SHIELD organization as his partner. He always calls Laura before he leaves and while he’s on an assignment, makes sure that he brings home small presents for Cooper, and sends FaceTime messages as much as he can even when he’s somewhere that he knows he really shouldn’t be on the phone. It's harder than he anticipates the first few weeks, pretending that his job is more important than seeing his son's first laugh, but eventually, he gets used to it.

On weekends, and sometimes after work, Natasha comes over to his apartment and reads reports, and talks to him while he makes dinner, and then stays half of the night to watch stupid television shows with her feet up on the couch.

It’s not anything like what Clint has with Laura, and he misses Cooper at every moment that he’s not at the farm, but it does make the space feel a little less lonely.

 

***

 

Clint returns from Latvia days earlier than he’s supposed to, thanks to the fact that his mark was an easier catch than expected. Instead of going back to New York, he grabs the first flight out to Indiana, leaving a message for Natasha not to expect him back at work for at least the next week and a half and to call his cell phone if she needs to reach him for any emergencies. He’s running on Red Bull and adrenaline for most of the trip, and it’s just past three in the morning by the time he finally reaches the house, parking the rental car on the grass and opening the front door quietly.

Everything is dark and silent, and Clint expects as much, though he also knows it’s a hit or miss at this point as to whether or not Cooper has woken up Laura. He drops his bag and his jacket on the couch before making his way up the stairs, silently congratulating himself for the foresight to focus on this particular bit of home improvement first, as the formerly creaky stairs had been overly annoying when trying to sleep.

“Hi, little guy.” He pushes the door to the bedroom open with a tiny creak, letting small slivers of light from the hallway fall onto the furniture that's piled around the room in some attempt at being settled, before walking over to where Cooper is sleeping at the foot of the bed. Clint finds himself smiling as he leans down and kisses the baby’s head, marveling slightly at the way he’s stretched out, short legs and arms spread as far as they can go. He turns away and takes off his shoes before crawling into bed beside Laura, who is turned over towards the window, the covers pulled up to her chin.

“Hey,” he whispers, settling next to her and kissing her ear gently. Laura shifts slowly and then turns over, squinting into the dark.

“Clint?”

“Hi.” He traces his hand down her cheek, pushing hair out of her face, and Laura yawns, her lips settling into a content grin.

“You weren’t supposed to be here until the end of the week,” she says in a voice riddled with sleep. Clint kisses her cheek.

“I work fast,” he says, taking her hand. “Besides, I missed you guys.”

“You’re not going to miss us when I make you get up in an hour to do a diaper change,” Laura says, shifting under the covers. Clint pulls his own side of the covers back and curls into the pillow, and Laura re-positions herself so that her head is nestled against his chest.

“I’ll live,” he says as her hand finds his arm, skirting over a collection of cuts. “Is he behaving?”

“Mmmm.” Laura swallows. “He’s a Barton, what do you think?”

“I think he’s probably giving you hell, if he’s anything like I was,” Clint says, letting his gaze travel across the room. Laura laughs quietly.

“You’d be right. He knows how to drive me crazy, except when he finally does fall asleep because he tires himself out from yelling so much.”

“Classic Barton behavior,” Clint affirms. “You know, I think I could have more of these.”

“Really.” Laura’s voice is dripping with disbelief. “I love you, but I think you’re still jet lagged.”

“I’m jet lagged, but I'm entirely lucid,” Clint protests, keeping his voice low. “Just wait a few years so I can get a handle on this dad thing I’m supposed to do, and I might even consider not making a surprise baby with you.”

“You’re insane,” Laura groans, turning over again. “And by the way, I don’t care that it’s three in the morning, I’m going to hold you to that.”

“Have I ever made you a promise I couldn’t keep?” he asks as she pushes her back against his chest, her legs tangling in his own.

“If you make me answer that now, I'll never get back to sleep.”

He smirks at her comment and closes his eyes as Laura’s voice drops off, lulled by the sound of her breathing in the otherwise quiet room, the silence that he's since gotten used to in a way that he thought he never would. He can get an hour, he figures, or maybe more before Cooper wakes up, and as he nods off, he mentally prepares his mind for the awakening that he knows is going to happen sooner rather than later.

And later in the early morning, while Clint’s feeding Cooper a bottle and sitting on the porch with his feet up against the stairs, the sun will come up over trees, drenching the entire world in a dome of golden, natural light. Laura will come up behind him and massage his back in the spots that she knows need the most attention, and she’ll put a large mug of coffee down by his legs before kissing his neck, and Clint will stare out at the farm, at the quiet landscape, and he’ll think that for once Bobbi might have actually been right.

He’s got himself pretty nice life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so much to everyone who has been reading along, leaving comments or Tumblr notes, and encouraging/supporting this fic! I never thought my brain had enough in it to write over 40,000 words of Clint/Laura (and some other people), but I guess I've been proven wrong.
> 
> This story wasn't any kind of attempt to fix anything, or re-write something in canon. It was simply a story that was written with the intention of exploring a relationship that I was intrigued with, that we only saw given to us in the established stages, looking at the journey that both characters took to get there. As such, while I knew I wasn't going to be able write in _every_ single moment surrounding Clint and Laura's lives up until AoU, I hope I at least provided enough of a story so that anyone who read felt like they were able to become invested in this relationship.
> 
> Thank you times a million to intrikate88, who beta'ed and pushed this into what it was, essentially making sure it was both accurate and thorough before I shoved it into the world with a bunch of hasty mistakes. Thank you to geckoholic for listening to me whine at literally every single moment and for being my usual encouraging right hand, despite the fact this pairing isn't exactly your cup of tea. And serious thank you to anyone who pushed me along the way with your comments or your kudos, here or in other places -- it's what kept me writing and it's what allowed me to follow through on this fic that really was a WIP, that required time and energy in order to put the remaining pieces together into something that was (hopefully) worth reading.
> 
> Come [find me on tumblr](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com) for more fic/feelings ramblings! As always, thank you for reading.


End file.
